LOS ANGELES — Director Ryan Coogler was still a student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts when he came to the attention of Forest Whitaker.

The young filmmaker arrived at Whitaker’s office to pitch ideas to the Oscar-winning actor and his producing partner, Nina Yang Bongiovi. One of them was based on the true story of a 22-year-old African-American shot by a white police officer on a subway platform. Whitaker and Bongiovi signed on as producers, helping Coogler develop it into his harrowing 2013 debut, Fruitvale Station.

“We decided to do it then, right on the spot,” says Whitaker in an interview promoting Coogler’s latest film, Black Panther. “I think it’s a real important film. It has a real strong social message in dealing with profiling, in dealing with young black males being killed by the police. There were so many different stories inside of it.”

Five years later, Whitaker accepted a supporting role in Black Panther, the latest mega-budgeted entry into the Marvel Universe that’s already being called a “history-making masterpiece” (Rolling Stone).

It was Coogler’s involvement that convinced Whitaker to play Zuri, spiritual leader of the fictional African nation of Wakanda overseen by King T’Challa, a.k.a. the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman).

Coogler’s relatively quick ascension from indie auteur to blockbuster mastermind doesn’t surprise Whitaker, who was intrigued by what he might be able to achieve given the broad canvas of a Hollywood superhero movie.

Forest Whitaker in Black Panther [Marvel]

“I knew he was going to be a major filmmaker,” Whitaker says about Coogler, 31. “I knew it because of odd reasons. No. 1, I thought he had a really strong moral compass and had a clarity in what he wanted to say. That made him know what he was trying to accomplish in the films he would be making. I felt he was a visionary even at that time with just the stories he had told me. Yeah, I knew something was going to happen.”

For a young filmmaker, getting enthusiastic support from Whitaker is no small thing. After all, the 56-year-old actor has worked with some of the best directors from multiple generations. Everyone from old-school masters like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone and Clint Eastwood; to more recent A-listers such as David Fincher, Lee Daniels and Denis Villeneuve; to indie auteurs Jim Jarmusch and Spike Jonze have hired him.

As with most of his performances, Whitaker brings gravitas to Black Panther as Zuri, a spiritual leader with ties to Wakanda’s royal family. The actor is no stranger to modern blockbusters, having shown up most recently in the Star Wars franchise as resistance fighter Saw Gerrera in 2016’s Rogue One.

But Whitaker’s probably best known for two searing performances as real-life figures. In Clint Eastwood’s 1988 biopic Bird, he played troubled jazz genius Charlie Parker, while his terrifying turn as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in 2006’s The Last King of Scotland earned him an Oscar for best actor.

“My natural attraction is going to be toward films that actually comment on society and try to better society.”

Whitaker continues to choose films that showcase his versatility, including playing Desmond Tutu in Roland Joffe’s The Forgiven and a journalist investigating the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. in LAbyrinth.

“My natural attraction is going to be toward films that actually comment on society and try to better society, to build up our desire to address issues and at the same time offer some form of solutions,” he says. “Either the solution of being able to have a dialogue or the solution of actually getting a point of view to figure out what to do to change it. I’m always going to do films that have that around them. They’ll be other films as well, but the large portion of them will probably have that comment.”

That includes Black Panther. While the film contains no shortage of dizzying action sequences, intriguing gadgets, explosions and exhilarating production, Coogler also gives it a contemplative centre by examining issues of race, representation, isolationism and identity.

“It takes you on an amazing ride, there’s so many things to experience,” Whitaker says. “It’s with humour but also with real emotional truth throughout the movie that really stops you and makes you think about the message that Ryan is saying. It’s unusual to find a movie that does all those things.”

LOS ANGELES — Director Ryan Coogler admits he was surprised by the initial feedback he got from the bigwigs at Marvel Studios when he began sharing his vision for its next franchise, Black Panther.

After all, he was set to make a $200-million epic blockbuster; a popcorn movie that mixed dazzling special effects, heart-stopping action sequences and sprawling set design. Presumably, the idea was to ensure it received the widest audience possible.

But when he met with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and other producers, Coogler was honest about wanting to make a superhero film that dug deep into the themes he had already explored in his first two films. It would be a superhero movie, but it would also have more than a few hints of the intimate work the filmmaker had already delivered in his relatively short five-year career.

Feige’s response? “Great. Let’s get going.”

“I was not expecting that,” says Coogler during a press conference in Beverly Hills earlier this month alongside Feige and the Black Panther cast. “But as I got to know these guys, specifically Kevin, this is what they are all about. He is all about making something that entertains people, that works as a piece of entertainment but leaves you with something to think about. He was very encouraging. I was getting notes while we were working on this: ‘Make it more specific, make it more personal.’ “

Four years earlier, Coogler had become an indie sensation thanks to his debut film, Fruitvale Station. It was a powerful, heart-wrenching drama based on the real-life police shooting of a young black man. While he entered the more mainstream world of the Rocky franchise with his 2015 followup, Creed, the critically acclaimed entry did nothing to diminish his reputation as an uncompromising filmmaker who asked tough questions about race, poverty and division in his country.

Still, he says the idea of making a mega-budgeted superhero flick was not all that foreign a concept to him.

“I grew up loving comic books,” he says. “Not just comic books, I loved pop culture. I loved toys, action figures, video games. When I got older and realized I wanted to make movies, that’s when I fell in love with international cinema and cinema that left you with something to chew on, something to think about. But I never fell out of love with those types of stories. The best version of those stories do both things.”

Judging from the early reviews of Black Panther, this is exactly what Coogler has achieved. Critics have pointed out the filmmaker’s ease with the superhero hallmarks that make these movies so much fun: the snappy one-liners, the non-stop action, the scenery-chewing villains, the vast, visual creativity. But many have also marvelled at how Coogler and his crew have deepened the genre by adding snippets of African culture, by exploring isolationism and colonialism, by introducing a group of empowered female characters and by asking provocative and timely questions about power and social responsibility.

All of this is wrapped into what at first seems like a fairly traditional origin story. After his father is murdered by a terrorist while giving a speech at the United Nations, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) becomes the king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda and inherits the role of its protector, the Black Panther. To the outside world, the country looks like an impoverished nation of farmers. In reality, it is technically advanced and incredibly wealthy.

But Wakanda is also isolated, thriving in secret with little interaction with other countries. At the heart of the film is a question about how it should use its power. Wakandan spy, and Black Panther’s former love interest, Nakia (played by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o) believes it should be used to better the lives of those suffering in surrounding countries. A villain with the revealing and not-so-subtle moniker of Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) emerges with a very different idea.

Coogler and his team present a unique vision of Africa, celebrating its colour, diversity, tribal culture and resourcefulness. For actress Danai Gurira, who grew up in Zimbabwe and plays the fierce, baldheaded Wakandan general Okoye, seeing Africa portrayed this way was an emotional experience.

“That’s something that you always want,” says Gurira, who is best known for playing Michonne on The Walking Dead. “You see the power and the potential of where you’re from, but you see how skewed it’s viewed by the world and how misrepresented it is and how distorted it is perceived by the world. This is kind of a salve to those wounds to see this world brought to life this way and to see all the potential and power of all the different African culturalism and aspects of our being that was celebrated.”

That includes having a superhero — the first African superhero in a major blockbuster — who speaks with an African accent. Boseman, who up until now is probably best known for his uncanny performance as James Brown in the 2014 biopic Get on Up, studied at Oxford.

“You see the power and the potential of where you’re from, but you see how skewed it’s viewed by the world and how misrepresented it is”

But prior to that, he went to Howard University in Washington, D.C., a school where the majority of students are African-American and taught “to respect our writers and our classics.” For a character whose ancestors have never been conquered, it was important that T’Challa had an accent that reflected his coming of age in a world untouched by colonialism, Boseman says.

The Black Panther made his cinematic debut with a cameo in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. But as a comic-book character, he has been around since the mid-1960s when he and Wakanda first appeared in a Fantastic Four story. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Black Panther was the first African hero to appear in a mainstream comic.

“Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the whole Marvel bullpen created Wakanda and created T’Challa and created Black Panther and made him a smarter, more accomplished character than any of the other white characters in the mid-1960s,” Feige says. “So if they had the guts to do that in the mid-1960s, the least we can do is live up to that and allow this story to be told in the way it needed to be told and not shy away from things that the Marvel family didn’t shy away from in the height of the Civil Rights era.”

We won’t divulge many details, as it is also a key moment in Ryan Coogler’s mega-budgeted superhero film Black Panther. But it involves Freeman’s dashing CIA agent Everett K. Ross leaning on his training as a fighter pilot for a nail-biting, climatic scene that takes place during the heat of battle in the fictional, technically advanced African nation of Wakanda.

“I was really pleased,” says Freeman. “I thought it was generous on the film’s part. We’re not short of white heroes in movies. So I thought to give one of the two white characters a bit of a heroic moment spoke very well of them.”

As Freeman is quick to point out, Black Panther is not about Everett K. Ross. He is a sidekick in the film, albeit a heroic one who is able to take charge in chaotic situations.

So Freeman was adamant that Ross not be a “schmuck” when interacting with Black Panther’s titular hero and his many heroic cohorts. While the British actor has proven to be an expert at deadpan comedy — check him out in the U.K. version of The Office or his turn as a loyal sidekick Dr. John Watson in Sherlock — he wanted Ross to be more than comic relief.

“We’re not short of white heroes in movies. So I thought to give one of the two white characters a bit of a heroic moment spoke very well of them.”

“In Black Panther he is going to be put out of his comfort zone enough that he doesn’t have to also be goofy,” Freeman says in an interview with Postmedia. “It’s enough that a guy very good at his job with some status is put out of his comfort zone and completely has his mind blown. It doesn’t need to be silly.”

Like the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Ross made his Marvel movie debut in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Freeman signed on with the understanding that the character would eventually reappear in some form in the Marvel Universe.

It may seem like an against-type swerve for Freeman, who first gained prominence as the mellow, self-deprecating Tim Canterbury in the original U.K. version of The Office opposite the narcissistic David Brent of Ricky Gervais.

But since then he has shown his range, particularly on prestige television. In Crackle’s thriller Startup, he won good reviews as the corrupt and creepily aggressive FBI agent. In the first season of the Calgary-shot FX dark comedy Fargo, he offered a nuanced turn as a sad-sack insurance salesman who slowly discovers his talents for murder and mayhem.

He has gone heroic before. His Watson in Sherlock is an Afghanistan war veteran and he was believable as J.R.R. Tolkien’s reluctantly heroic Bilbo Baggins in the three-part Hobbit trilogy.

But Freeman’s Ross is much more of a take-charge type of guy who dodges bullets, interrogates baddies and pilots futuristic crafts in Wakanda.

Martin Freeman [Getty Images]

“It feels pretty crazy,” Freeman says about the action sequences. “The shoot-’em-up scene in the Korean casino is just full of very impressive work by stunt people. You see those people really earn their money, taking proper tumbles and dives and falls and just doing lunatic things that I’m glad it’s not my job to do.

“It’s loud, it’s chaotic. It’s an organized chaos, but when the scene is going on and there are squibs going off everywhere and explosions and stunt guys flinging themselves down stairs, you think ‘I’m staying out of the way of that 6’4 guy who is going to fall right next to me.’ “

As for that “Han Solo” moment, much of Ross’s heroics were aided by green-screen technology, which also presented unique challenges for the actor.

“The challenge there is, genuinely, to avoid bad acting,” Freeman says. “Because you are imagining everything. I did that scene several months after principal photography. So you’re getting back into that world of ‘Hang on, who is doing what? Where am I?’ You’re imagining everything you’re seeing because you’re not seeing anything and you are not acting with anyone else.

“It’s all things that are rife for making you do some terrible acting. That’s the challenge for me in scenes like that: not overdoing it, not underdoing it. Yeah, just not being sh-t. That’s the main challenge in all acting. All my work is trying not to be sh-t.”

LOS ANGELES — It doesn’t take long into a rollcall of female characters in Black Panther to recognize a certain trend.

These women get the job done.

There’s Okoye (Danai Gurira), the fierce head of an elite unit of female bodyguards who oversees intel and security for the technically advanced fictional African country of Wakanda and its new king, T’Challa, a.k.a. Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman). Her combat skills are equal, if not superior, to the titular character and she doesn’t need a custom-made vibranium suit to protect herself while using them. There’s also Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o), a Wakandan spy and Black Panther’s former love interest who is also no slouch in hand-to-hand combat but also possesses a sense of social justice far deeper than any of the men around her. There’s Shuri (Letitia Wright), Black Panther’s genius kid sister who is far more adept than her older brother when it comes to understanding, designing and explaining Wakanda’s advanced technology.

Finally, there’s Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Black Panther’s mother and queen mother of Wakanda who attempts to hold the kingdom together after her husband is murdered by terrorists.

As Entertainment Tonight’s Nischelle Turner pointed out while hosting a news conference for the latest lavish entry into the Marvel Universe in Beverly Hills last week, the movie may be titled Black Panther but it could very well have been called The Badass Women of Wakanda.

“In African culture, they feel as if there is no king without a queen,” says Bassett, who joined the cast, director Ryan Coogler and producer Kevin Feige in Beverly Hills the day after the star-studded Hollywood premiere of the film. “In this story, it highlights the queen, the warrior, the young sister. I was so proud to have my daughter and my son there last night. Because in their faces and in their spirit, they were feeling themselves. And they stood taller after last night.”

Not unlike recent blockbusters Wonder Woman and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Black Panther seems to represent a modern shift in thinking when it comes to the types of roles females can have in action-packed blockbusters. The film must be doing something right. Weeks before its release it became victim of a campaign by an alt-right group to sabotage its score on Rotten Tomatoes. The plan failed miserably, but not before it was revealed that it was hatched by the same basement-dwelling trolls who attempted a similar tampering of the Last Jedi a few months earlier because they were disgusted by what they saw as the film’s “feminist agenda.”

There was no talk of a feminist agenda at the Beverly Hills news conference, which happened before the Rotten Tomatoes story came to light. But there was a sense among the female cast that the film deserved to be celebrated not only because it is the first time a black superhero has headlined a Marvel Universe blockbuster, but because it also offered so many deep and meaningful roles for women.

“Her joy and her pride is walking with that bald head and that tattoo on it,” says Gurira. “It’s so subversive.”

The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira plays Okoye, both a general of the Wakandan armed forces and the leader of Dora Milaje, the royal family’s ferocious baldheaded, tattooed bodyguards. In one scene, Okoye bitterly objects to having to wear a wig while undercover.

“Her joy and her pride is walking with that bald head and that tattoo on it,” says Gurira. “It’s so subversive and it’s so subversive in the right way to say you don’t have to have hair to be beautiful. I thought that was so fun. There’s so many great things I could say about how Ryan developed these women characters and allowed us to collaborate. I feel really blessed about it.”

The talent wasn’t just in front of the camera either. Coogler points out that the film employed a number of women behind the scenes, not to be subversive but because they were the best people for the job.

“This film had the involvement of brilliant women all over it, from start to finish,” he says.

All of which offers a strong message for audiences, says Nyong’o, an Oscar winner.

“Each and every one of us is an individual, unique,” she says. “We all have our own sense of power and our own agency and we hold our own space without being pitted against each other. I think that’s a very powerful message to send to children, both male and female.

“In this film, there is so many of us. We really get a sense of the fabric of Wakanda as a nation. We see women alongside men and we see how much more effective a society can be if we allow women to explore their full potential.”

Black Panther opens Feb. 16.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/black-panther-puts-women-in-spotlight-lets-them-roar/feed0Black Pantherpostmedianews1Black Panther5 things you might not know about … Elfhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/5-things-you-might-not-know-about-elf
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/5-things-you-might-not-know-about-elf#respondThu, 07 Dec 2017 22:05:30 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=766140Will Ferrell’s jaunty yellow tights. Spaghetti drenched in maple syrup. An impromptu dance routine to Tag Team’s 1993 anthem Whoomp! (There it Is). These are just some of the things that make Elf, the 2003 film about a misfit seeking his dad, a holiday classic. Here are some things you might be surprised to learn about it.

1. The role of Buddy was meant for Jim Carrey

Carrey was attached to Elf when the initial script made the rounds in 1993. But 10 years of delays — and a little movie called Ace Ventura: Pet Detective — kept the rubber-faced actor from donning Buddy’s bright yellow tights. Will Ferrell signed on instead, fresh off his run on Saturday Night Live.

2. Ferrell was once a mall Santa

Before SNL, Ferrell spread holiday cheer by suiting up as the big guy himself — with fellow SNL cast member Chris Kattan as his elf. “It was hilarious because little kids could care less about the elf. They just come right to Santa Claus,” Ferrell told Spliced Wire. “So by the second weekend, Kattan had dropped the whole affectation he was doing and was like, ‘Santa’s over there, kid.’”

3. Director Jon Favreau made a couple cameos

Most people recognize Favreau as the doctor who gives Buddy his DNA test, but he also provided the voice for the narwhal that surfaces from the water when Buddy’s leaving the North Pole: “Bye, Buddy,” he says. “Hope you find your dad.” Producer Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie in A Christmas Story, also made a cameo as an elf in Santa’s workshop.

4. Some store scenes were filmed in an insane asylum

The department store Buddy decorated is known as bright and shiny Gimbels onscreen, but the filming location in Vancouver had a very different history. “They gutted an old insane asylum and made it a sound studio,” Artie Lange, who played the surly department store Santa in Elf, told ABC News. The asylum also held sets for Walter’s apartment and the film’s prison cell, and previously hosted sets from The X-Files.

5. Ferrell’s jack-in-the-box reactions were real

When Buddy’s an unhappy toy tester in the North Pole, he anxiously timed each jack-in-the-box in the workshop and startled as each popped open. Favreau used a remote control to vary the timing, reports Mental Floss, making sure that Ferrell’s reactions were authentic.

That’s one of the lasting impressions from John Scheinfeld’s documentary on John Coltrane, the reverence people have for the legendary jazz saxophonist. In Chasing Trane, most of the interviewees — including family members, musicians, journalists and former U.S. president Bill Clinton — speak in awe and sometimes hushed tones about Coltrane’s musicianship as well as his spirituality. You can practically see the pedestal.

What is it about Coltrane’s music that inspires such reverence? Was there a 20th-century musician who more embodied the combination of musicality and spirituality? Maybe not — not many musicians have had a church started in their name. At one point in Chasing Trane, guitarist Carlos Santana says Coltrane’s sound “rearranges molecular structures.”

That’s heady stuff, but Chasing Trane isn’t a heady doc. Through the eyes of others, Scheinfeld personalizes the man behind the mythological music. (The quotes from Coltrane are voiced by Denzel Washington.) In one endearing anecdote, stepdaughter Antonia Andrews describes how Coltrane walked home from a gig during a snowstorm to help save money to buy her new shoes.

The enlightening personal stories complement the main story of Coltrane’s wide-ranging musical life. Chasing Trane traces his career from his North Carolina beginnings to his death in July 1967 at age 40 from liver cancer.

Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary[]

He packed a lot in, and Chasing Trane more than covers the high points. Some examples: His two tenures with Miles Davis in the 1950s produced some of the most acclaimed jazz in history, including Kind of Blue (1959) — considered by many to be the best jazz album of the bunch. Coltrane’s swirling soprano-sax interpretation of My Favourite Things in 1961, reinvented a show tune and became a hit.

He then added bassist Jimmy Garrison to pianist McCoy Tyner (interviewed in the documentary and the only living band member), and drummer Elvin Jones in what would become known as the classic quartet.

In December 1964, the foursome recorded what’s considered Coltrane’s spiritual and musical apex: A Love Supreme. Chasing Trane provides extensive background and commentary on A Love Supreme, which features a final movement titled Psalm. Coltrane wrote a liner prayer for Psalm and interpreted it via his tenor saxophone. His spirituality and music are entwined; the documentary makes that clear.

After A Love Supreme, Coltrane continued his search by exploring more abrasive — or what he called “cleansing” — sounds and adding musicians to the classic quartet. He lost a lot of fans, critics and musicians in the process — Tyner and Jones both left by the end of 1965. Chasing Trane explores the pro and con reaction, but doesn’t go into much detail about Coltrane’s polarizing final musical phase. Coltrane’s free-jazz landmark Ascension — recorded with 10 other musicians about six months after A Love Supreme — is heard on the soundtrack but not discussed. There is, however, plenty of detail on the final year of Coltrane’s tragically short life, including fascinating coverage of his tour of Japan.

Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary[PBS]

As you would expect, Chasing Trane is crammed with music from Coltrane’s career, but it’s very much a visual documentary as well. Gorgeous photos from jazz’s heyday of the 1950s and ‘60s, concert and studio footage and never-before-seen home movies help present the humanity behind the musical icon.

Chasing Trane accomplishes dual goals: Coltrane devotees will cherish it, but it’s also accessible enough for the uninitiated to enjoy. The documentary will undoubtedly inspire those same uninitiated to explore Coltrane’s music. And once you start to explore it, it becomes a labour of love. A love supreme.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/chasing-trane-documentary-captures-spirit-john-coltrane/feed0Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentarypostmedianews1Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane DocumentaryChasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary10 high school movies and the fun lessons they teachhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/10-high-school-movies-and-the-fun-lessons-they-teach
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/10-high-school-movies-and-the-fun-lessons-they-teach#respondFri, 01 Sep 2017 20:06:04 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=765148Ah, back to school. It’s such an exciting time of shiny shoes and crisp binders, and yet, the many unanswered questions — Will I have any friends? Will I make the basketball team? etc. — are enough to make any student anxious.

Luckily, Hollywood is here to help. Here are some pointers on surviving the hallways and beyond, as seen in the movies.

How to dress on the first day: Clueless (1995)

Mustard-yellow plaid blazer with matching kilt and vest? White thigh-high stockings? Hat resembling a lambshade? If you can check all of those boxes, you’re definitely set to put your best foot forward — assuming you’re wearing platforms, of course. At least, it worked for spoiled Beverly Hills rich girl Cher (Alicia Silverstone), and her posh posse (Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy), in the hit high school comedy Clueless.

How to make friends: Breakfast Club (1985)

Five teen stereotypes — the brain, the beauty, the jock, the rebel and the recluse — are thrown together for an all-day Saturday detention. At first, true to form, they torment and annoy each other. But eventually they surprise each other, learn to get past their self-made defences and see each other for more than the rigid roles they’ve been hiding behind. (But first they run around the school and smoke a little weed.)

How to pass a class: Billy Madison (1994)

So you’re not the sharpest pencil in the pack? You’d rather debate the merits of shampoo and conditioner than do actual work? Billy Madison (Adam Sandler), is your spirit animal. In order to prove to his dad that he can take over the family company, slacker Billy must pass grades 1 through 12 in record time. All he needs is some motivation: lavish parties for passing each grade, a love interest, and study sessions with a little tasteful stripping thrown in. (Also, watch out for any giant penguins out to kill you.)

Mean Girls [Paramount Pictures]

How to defeat a bully: Mean Girls (2004)

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That’s the totally “fetch” manner in which high school newcomer Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), takes on the evil Plastics clique and its queen bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams), in this witty comedy penned by Tina Fey. Sadly, her infiltration plan goes awry and lands her the title of school outcast. But several skimpy Christmas concert outfits, one giant all-girl brawl and an unfortunate school bus mishap later, she is able to restore peace in the hallways. Is that melted Plastics we smell?

How to skip school and get away with it: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

If you want to take a day off school in style, it helps if you have a foolproof plan that involves convincing your friend to borrow his dad’s prized Ferrari so you can drive your girlfriend to Chicago and sneak into a fancy restaurant. If you’re really lucky, you’d get to march in a parade.

How to make learning fun: School of Rock (2003)

Every school has at least one rebellious, free-spirited teacher. Here’s a tip: Find that teacher! Bonus points if they look like Jack Black, whose unemployed character turns a clan of prep school fourth-graders into a talented rock band in this surprisingly heartwarming comedy.

Heath Ledger, left, and Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You []

How to find love: 10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

No matter how antisocial, aggressive and acid-tongued you might be, there’s someone who’s just right for you. Really. In this teen take on The Taming of the Shrew, scary boy Patrick (Heath Ledger), agrees to date prickly gal Kat (Julia Stiles), for a tidy sum so Kat’s sister can finally find a boyfriend. Thing is, somewhere in the strategic manoevering and pretending, Patrick and Kat realize they’re in love. And they got there just by being true to themselves and not caring what anyone else thought about it. Well, Patrick’s adorably dorky dance to Can’t Take My Eyes Off You in the bleachers probably helped.

How to make the sports team: All the Right Moves (1983)

Tom Cruise portrays a determined high school footballer looking for a way out of his small town to a bigger, better life on a college campus. The best way to do that is with football scholarship, and that means hard work, practice, and then some more hard work and practice.

How to find your true self: Grease (1978)

You may think you belong in bobby socks and a poodle skirt, but maybe you’re more comfortable in leather tights and high heels. Who knew Olivia Newton-John had it in her!

How to order pizza to class, exit a swimming pool, stop a robbery with a pot of hot coffee: Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

There are so many valuable lessons to be learned from this classic teen romp.

And what’s with Pinocchio, with his desire to become a “real” boy? Were Disney animators actually sending out a coded message more than 70 years ago — giving us a closeted young gay yearning to come out?

And might Tinker Bell soon return to the screen — this time in a lesbian relationship with Snow White?

Or is it simply that the silly season is back upon us — especially when it comes to Hollywood and the U.S. right wing’s frenzied response to the revelation that Disney’s new live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast features a character who may actually — gasp — be gay.

The son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham has urged a nation-wide boycott of the new movie. An Alabama drive-in has moved quickly to announce it will not be showing the film. In Vladimir Putin’s homophobic Russia, no one under the age of 16 will be allowed to see it. And the film has been shelved entirely in Muslim Malaysia.

If you Google the movie’s name, screen after screen will pop up with outraged protests from such diverse bodies as One Million Moms and the neo-Nazi website Storm Trooper. It’s all in response to director Bill Condon’s recent disclosure that this latest incarnation of Beauty and the Beast features the Mouse House’s “first exclusively gay moment.” It’s provided by LeFou, fawning manservant to the swaggering Gaston, a Disney villain for whom LeFou apparently nurses a love that dares not speak its name.

“They’re trying to push the LGBT agenda into the hearts and minds of your children,” he said.

This has been sufficient to rekindle the religious right’s paranoia about the secret liberal agenda it has long believed the film industry to be levelling at unsuspecting children and their parents in the name of family entertainment. And given the toxic conspiracy culture permeating the highest levels of the Trump administration, should we really be surprised that it’s happening now?

Only days after Donald Trump’s newly appointed attorney general signed off on a curtailment of LGBT rights, evangelist Franklin Graham was declaring war on Disney for seeking to “normalize” gay lives. “They’re trying to push the LGBT agenda into the hearts and minds of your children,” he said.

Guardians of traditional family values have long been vigilant, often to a nutty degree, when it comes to family entertainment. We have seen Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie under suspicion because they live together. Barney the dinosaur has been attacked as a gay tool of Satan. The late Jerry Falwell, an immensely influential evangelist, claimed to have outed Tiny Winky of Teletubbies fame as gay. And is it really appropriate, some ask, for SpongeBob SquarePants to be seen holding hands with his friend Patrick?

But it’s Disney that has been most consistently under attack. And the hostility has intensified in more recent years, partly because its dominant position in family entertainment automatically makes it the primary target, partly because of its support of LGBT rights within its own organization.

Three years ago, Disney’s animated hit Frozen came under fire because of the affection between snow queen Elsa and her feisty younger sister — gay incest, anyone? And did the character of Kristoff have a thing for his reindeer, Sven? A National Catholic Register critic seemed to think so, accusing Frozen of gay themes and tolerating indecent relations between man and beast.

Meanwhile. an article in the Guardian newspaper has Guy Lodge, British film critic for Variety, mischievously suggesting that Disney animation has “a long history of LGBT coding, intended and otherwise” and that some audience members have been assigning gay identities to Disney characters for decades.

“Speculating in this manner can be superficial, stereotype-dependent fun,” says Lodge, as he proceeds to cite Pinocchio’s yearnings and the friendship between Bambi and Flower, as well as reminding us of Timon and Pumbaa in The Lion King, the single status of Baloo the Bear in The Jungle Book and the now-acknowledged fact that the animated Sea Witch in The Little Mermaid was based on real life drag queen Divine.

But should any of this really matter in a year when Moonlight, a movie with patently gay themes, was named best picture at the Oscars? Well, it apparently does to Fox News columnist Todd Starnes, who considers America in peril from an LGBT agenda.

“When it comes to the entertainment industry, nothing is sacred in its quest to indoctrinate American children,” he said on March 1. “So don’t be surprised if the next Disney animated classic documents Tinker Bell’s torrid lesbian affair with Snow White while a gender-questioning Peter Pan crushes on Pinocchio, who just got out of a gender-fluid relationship with one of the seven dwarfs.”

Other commentators, however, may be bold enough to say — bring it on. Three years ago, CNN’s Sally Kohn was suggesting that Frozen didn’t go far enough. “Ain’t it finally time for a kids film in which a princess finally marries a princess?” she tweeted.

It’s not what you’d expect to hear from the lips of a Canadian superhero. Delivered by Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in his 2009 solo film, the line coyly hints at the X-Men’s propensity to engage in cutting-edge violence over Pearsonian diplomacy.

It’s also what makes him a fan favourite. With his deep-seated anger, trust and identity issues, Wolverine (AKA Logan), is like a perpetually wounded animal. Created in 1974, the clawed bruiser was an anti-hero long before cable TV came along — and he’s a slice above the comic medium’s trio of defining superheroes. Batman is a bonkers billionaire with a vigilante vanity project; Superman is an earnest, alien boy scout with a God complex; and Spider-Man is a sarcastic, nerdy kid handed great power (and great attention). Wolverine is an anti-social, grumpy, beer-chugging, cigar-chomping mutant who has been reluctantly saving people — and occasionally the world — for roughly two centuries.

The character’s casting in 2000s X-Men was paramount to the success of the franchise. Coming in the wake of the 1997 flop, Batman & Robin, a great Wolverine was needed to save superhero cinema. Jackman’s performance captured the intractable pain locked inside the body of a man who can heal from any physical wound, but whose mind is forever scarred.

After slicing and dicing his way into moviegoers’ hearts for 17 years, Jackman is set to play the hero a final time in Logan, opening March 3. (For the record, we’ve had three Spideys, two Batmen and two Supermen in that time span.)

Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins []

While Jackman isn’t Canadian, having an Australian inhabit Wolverine’s iconic sideburns was the next best thing. Something about both nations being underdogs living in the shadow of greater powers? At first glance, Wolverine makes for an unlikely Canuck. Born in Alberta in the 1800s, his primary mutant powers are a healing factor, and razor-sharp claws that painfully burst through his hands (in comic panel bubbles, this process famously made the sound “Snikt!”). No X-ray vision; no gadgets or armoured vehicles; no mystical hammers or magical rings; no gamma radiation or radioactive spiders. Wolverine was born to cut things and recover from injury. As he might say, “That’s it, bub.” Modest. Just like us.

“Your country needs you!” the fanatic U.S. Major Stryker tells Wolverine in 2009 (this is the same villain who infused the hero’s claws and bones with a powerful steel alloy). His response: “I’m Canadian.”

Wolverine’s pain threshold and berserker rage make him a prime candidate to suit up for Canada’s game. In another lifetime, he could have been a top hockey goon. With his signature horn-shaped cut, Logan could have given new meaning to hockey hair. The character’s lifelong battle against his animal instincts speaks to another Canadian trait. Endurance. The ability to survive the wilderness — and wildness — that defines our country. (Wolverine is essentially what would happen if a Mountie, and part-time lumberjack, happened to have been raised by Don Cherry and a team of coureur des bois.)

Wolverine and Canada are both “always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” People really like us, but someone else is always a little more important — like our southern neighbour and “leader of the free world.”

So, we can sympathize with Wolvie’s mostly unrequited love with Jean Grey; her boyfriend Cyclops — the X-Men’s laser-eyed leader — is the America of this equation. While Wolverine may not make the team’s big decisions, he often pointedly challenges them. As Slate.com put it in one movie review, “Like all wildly successful figures in American entertainment, Wolverine is a Canadian.”

Hugh Jackman as Logan in X-Men: Days of Future Past. [Handout]

Wolverine first appeared in The Incredible Hulk #180 hunting a Wendigo, a mythical Indigenous creature. Logan’s also a Canadian veteran of both Word Wars (Library and Archives Canada even released his fake military records this past April Fool’s). And like our complex, bilingual, multicultural nation, Wolverine is in a near-constant identity crisis (understandable, given he had his memory wiped). After two centuries and counting, Logan is still struggling to figure out who he is. Canada, at age 150, is arguably in much the same place.

Wolverine doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. He’s not the flashiest, loudest or strongest superhero, but he just might be the most dependable (how very Canadian). He always ends up joining the good fight. Beneath that gruff exterior is a big ol’ softy — a man of character who’ll stand on guard for thee.

In his eighth and final appearance before being declawed, Jackman’s silver-screen Wolverine is aged, weakened, broken down — and growling his way through an all-too-near apocalyptic future. America is a dusty, dry wasteland. Our hero’s powers of healing are diminished, and he boozes to kill chronic pain. (Logan is Unforgiven meets The Wrestler). Hiding on the Mexican border, Logan is just trying to survive, while helping care for an ailing Professor X (Patrick Stewart). Everything changes when Wolverine becomes the reluctant protector of a young mutant girl.

Yes, a Canadian co-created Superman, and Wolverine was invented by Americans. But the latter didn’t know what to do with their northern hero. Fittingly, a British-Canadian X-Men artist, John Byrne, takes credit for fighting to keep his fellow countryman in the comic — and for the makeover that turned the mangy mutant into a star.

Sure, Deadpool is the true patriot who received the most love in 2016, but Wolverine is a cut above — his place secure at the top of our superhero pedestal (if not the top of the international pecking order). Jackman lent a helping hand (and claws), toward that climb. There’s a reason Wolverine is the only major member of the X-Men that hasn’t already been played by a younger star. Jackman has become almost inseparable from the clawed people’s champion.

“This character will go on,” Jackman recently stated.

True, but whoever plays Logan next will have to be razor sharp. X is for great eXpectations.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/hugh-jackmans-wolverine-a-canadian-superhero/feed0Hugh Jackman as Wolverinepostmedianews1Hugh Jackman in X-Men OriginsHugh Jackman as Logan in X-Men: Days of Future Past.4 questions about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, answeredhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/4-questions-about-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-answered
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/4-questions-about-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-answered#commentsWed, 16 Nov 2016 19:09:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=761855What kind of beasts are we talking about, and why are they so fantastic?

Yup. It was published in 2001 and positioned as an actual textbook from Harry Potter’s library. The author is listed as Newt Scamander, a famed magizoologist, but of course J.K. Rowling is the real mastermind. Incidentally, the new version of Fantastic Beasts that’s being published is a word-for-word copy of the film’s screenplay, which Rowling wrote.

Will we see a young Dumbledore?

You bet your wonderful wizarding wand you will — eventually. The Hogwarts headmaster pops up in the second Fantastic Beasts film, and dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald also appears in the series. Fantastic Beasts is kind of a Harry Potter prequel set 90 years ago in New York City. Some characters are familiar, but the film isn’t directly centred on Harry, Hermione and Ron — it’s all about Newt, Jacob Kowalski and sisters Porpentina and Queenie Goldstein.

We’re still confused — Ms. Rowling, you have some ’splaining to do.

Luckily, Ms. Rowling has already done plenty of ’splaining. The author has published dozens of complementary stories and essays on her Pottermore website, including a collection on how the wizarding world works, a guide to the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) and a partial history of magic in North America.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang. But these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

MOVIES

Big releases on Sept. 23: The Magnificent Seven; Storks.

Big picture: When it comes to cowboy flicks, anything is an improvement on Adam Sandler’s recent Netflix movie The Ridiculous 6. The Magnificent Seven is a remake of the 1960 western — itself a remake of the 1954 Japanese Film Seven Samurai. (Is your head spinning yet?) Under grave threat, a frontier town hires a ragtag crew of outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers, boozehounds and mercenaries. What follows is a rapid fire of bullets and roguish one-liners. Sample: adorable drunken cowboy Chris Pratt mugging for the camera and spewing lines like “Gawdangit I’m good.” The team of western anti-heroes, with names like Goodnight Robicheaux and Red Harvest, are played by an impressive ensemble, including Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. After Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a new trend is clearly emerging. I predict it won’t be long before westerns titled The Terrible Twos, The Fine Nine and The Sven Ten.

Meanwhile, Storks get the animated treatment. The fabled birds once delivered babies with help from their “baby-making machine,” but they are now relegated to package delivery for an Internet giant. When an unexpected bundle of joy arrives, their top carrier Junior truly takes flight for the first time — with the help of Tulip, his human sidekick, an orphan that lives on Stork Mountain. (This movie is ideal for parents who don’t want to tell their kids where babies actually come from.)

Forecast: The Seven will win the box-office shootout, and will break down thematic barriers in the animated movie industry. I predict a racy R-rated cartoon called The Birds and the Bees. Charlie Sheen will play a horny songbird, while Scarlett Johansson will voice the honeyiest of honeybees. (On a side note, I feel these animals and insects deserve solo movie titles: Sloths, Fireflies, Hummingbirds … and Elephants (all voiced by Republicans).

Big picture: In TV land, good ideas are typically original ideas. Take Pitch, Fox’s new drama about the first female baseball pitcher in the major leagues. With an all-star lead performer in Kylie Bunbury (Under the Dome) and a talented bench of supporting actors (Bob Balaban, Ali Larter, Mark-Paul Gosselaar), this one could be a home run.

Then, there are the bad ideas — the annual host of reboots doomed to fail. For starters, 1980s revamp MacGyver, about the brilliant problem solver’s son. The good news? MacGyver no longer has Richard Dean Anderson’s mullet. But in the form of Lucas Till, MacGyver now looks like a skinny elf from Middle Earth who abandoned adventuring, and now only gets out of bed to perform Coldplay covers at coffee-shop open-mic nights.

Then Fox tries to get our head spinning with a small screen take on 1973’s The Exorcist, about two priests helping a demonically challenged family. Geena Davis plays a mother whose daughter returns from college literally ready to raise hell.

To complete the unoriginal trifecta, there’s Lethal Weapon, with Damon Wayans taking over for straight man Danny Glover, while Clayne Crawford mimics Mel Gibson’s crazy cop with “nothing to lose.” (You can put on your own bulletproof vest by turning the channel.)

Finally, there’s semi-original ideas like “What would happen if Jack Bauer was president?” Kiefer Sutherland plays a low-level cabinet member bumped up to prez after a terrorist attack wipes out D.C.’s entire line of succession. From protecting America’s leader to playing the commander in chief himself? Can Sutherland pull off the promotion? Will he be bored without any hands-on torture scenes? Watch and learn.

Honourable mentions: Kevin Can Wait (Sept. 19, CBS/Global); The Good Place (Sept. 19, NBC/Global). I couldn’t agree more with this sitcom’s title. Kevin James (The King of Queens) returns to the small screen as a retired cop adjusting to family life. (Note: I almost fell asleep in the middle of typing that sentence). Far more promising is The Good Place, the new heavenly sitcom — literally — starring Kristen Bell and an angelic Ted Danson. It’s from the creator of the beloved (by me at least) Parks and Recreation. (Back-to-back episodes air Sept. 19 on both networks).

Big picture: The Boss always commands attention — especially with an album title that reads like a religious tomb. This divine tracklist is the musical companion to his 500-page autobiography; Born to Run (could it have been called anything else?) also hitting shelves this month. The sonic canvas covers his whole career, featuring 18 songs hand-picked by Springsteen himself, including five previously unreleased tracks. (Talk about Christmas come early! I’ve already hired a stork to make the delivery.)

Meanwhile, Toronto teen heartthrob Shawn Mendes straddles a more mature sound on his second album. He may be the new-and-improved Justin Bieber, but he chose a tough release date in terms of competition.

Forecast: If Springsteen is The Boss, Mendez is only The Intern.

Honourable mention: Dwight Yoakam (Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars); Passenger (Young as the Morning Old as the Sea). Yoakam gets an F for album title originality. Passenger — otherwise known as English singer-songwriter Mike Rosenberg — gets an A.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang. But these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

MOVIES

Big releases on Sept 16: Blair Witch; Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Big picture: I’d do just about anything for my family, but following my missing sister’s footsteps into the witch-infested backwoods of Maryland — after discovering live footage of what appears to be her film crew being hunted by a demonic force — is not one of them. (Sorry sis, you’re on your own. If you have cell reception, I recommend calling the Ghostbusters.) Blair Witch’s James is a braver man than I, and convinces his college buddies (next time just stick to beer pong, kids) to venture into the infamous Black Hills Forest in search of his MIA sister (one of the ill-fated crew from the 1999 original).

Faster than you can say “boo!”, the trees around their campsite are full of the witch’s signature wooden carvings (imagine a scouting badge activity if Marilyn Manson were a Boy Scout leader). “It’s going to be OK,” one of the sequel’s idiots/heroes says. (Psst! It’s not.)

Speaking of sequels, Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is having a baby! But Daddy’s identity is a mystery after two epic, closely timed “puppet shows” (her words) — one with a handsome American stranger (Patrick Dempsey) and one with her cranky British ex Mark Darcy (Colin Firth). Toss Tom Selleck into the mix, and the film could have doubled as both a Bridget Jones sequel and a reboot of Three Men and a Baby. This dramedy is all about questions: Who is the father? Who does Bridget want to the be father? Who is Bridget really in love with? Which man can buy Bridget a better coffee? And, most importantly, has anyone in this movie heard of a paternity test? (We could all have saved two hours of our lives.)

Forecast: Sequels are easy money, but I can’t be the only one who would have preferred to watch a film called Blair Witch: Bridget Jones’s Baby.

Honourable mention: Snowden. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays divisive whistleblower Edward Snowden. Is he a hero? Is he a traitor? Is he in league with the Blair Witch? (Fingers crossed.) Just be sure never to tell him a secret.

Big picture: The original Netflix movie ARQ is Groundhog Dog meets Looper. Robbie Amell plays Renton, the creator of a mysterious energy source called ARQ. We find him and his girlfriend (Rachael Taylor) re-living the same unfortunate day, in which they are beset by masked assailants, doglike robots and much gunfire. But ARQ somehow presses re-set on the terror, giving them additional chances to change their fate. Unlike Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I don’t think Renton will have time to comically explore different ways to off himself, learn to play musical instruments, save old women crossing the street, or woo Andie MacDowell.

Meanwhile, American Horror Story returns with its most mysterious season yet — with no plot points or casting revealed (aside from returnees Sarah Paulson and Lady Gaga). While details are more secretive than an X-File, online leaks suggest the new season of Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology is called The Mist. For the record, I’d love to see the following American Horror Story seasons: AHS: White House (the documentary version could come first if Donald Trump wins), AHS: Animal Hospital, AHS: Amusement Park (with Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine making a cameo) and AHS: Wrigley Field. (How many ghosts and curses does it take to keep a baseball team from winning a World Series?)

Forecast: ARQ will hook enough viewers into its loop. But I’d pay good money to see a sequel in which Renton meets up with Murray’s famously curmudgeon weatherman for time-loop advice. Meanwhile, I predict American Horror Story’s season will take a page from ARQ and venture into the sci-fi realm.

Honourable mention: High Maintenance (HBO Canada, Sept. 16). This acclaimed web series moves to HBO as an affable, bearded drug dealer connects with the eccentric hipsters, hippies and artists of modern Brooklyn, N.Y. Imagine a youthful version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski uttering lines likes: “Sometimes you just put on head phones and you’re walking around the city and you feel like you’re in a movie and its awesome.” Totally, dude.

Canadian electronic music group A Tribe Called Red blends instrumental hip hop, reggae, moombahton and dubstep-influenced dance music with elements of First Nations music, particularly vocal chanting and drumming. [PNG]

MUSIC

Big release on Sept. 16: Meat Loaf (Braver Than We Are); A Tribe Called Red (We Are the Halluci Nation).

Big Picture: Meat Loaf re-teams with songwriter Jim Steinman (Bat Out of Hell) for a trip down memory lane. Debut single Going All the Way is a multi-layered pop symphony in the same vein of Paradise by the Dashboard Light and even includes the same female vocalist. The album cover features a cartoon Meat Loaf paired with a sword-wielding warrior as they face off against skeletal four horseman of the apocalypse riding flying motor cycles. (If this premise hasn’t already been green-lit as a TV series, there isn’t a brain cell left in the business.)

The lyrics, of course, are hammier than ever. The “romantic” ballad Speaking in Tongues serves up cringe-inducing lines like “We’re overflowing with desire / You’ve got the spark, I’ve got wood” and “There are things we learn from the fires of love / An erection of the heart.” Clearly, Meat Loaf and Steinman shouldn’t quit their jobs to write Valentines.

Meanwhile, ever-talented Ottawa electronic group, A Tribe Called Red, release their third full-length album. High profile guests include acclaimed throat singer Tanya Tagaq, rapper Shad, and Indigenous artists such as Black Bear and the Chippewa Travellers.

Forecast: Meat Loaf serves up nostalgia to hungry fans; A Tribe Called Red will be coloured into the shortlist for another Polaris Prize.

The guy who played Jacob Black in the Twilight films cannot stop giggling as he describes the rank prank he played on his co-stars while filming the The Ridiculous 6, the Adam Sandler western spoof Netflix says is its most-streamed film ever.

“I had a can of fart spray. You spray it in the air and it makes the whole room smell like a nasty fart. One day we were all sitting around the monitor, like 15 of us, and I would spray the thing two times and walk away and listen to everybody freak out,” he says.

“They had to leave the room for, like, 10 minutes to let it clear. They ended up believing that something had died beneath the floorboards! And the funniest thing is I realized the other day that I never told them that it was me.”

Fart humour and its ilk, of course, have been lurking under the floorboards of Sandler films for decades. And though critics largely turn up their noses at such uncouth shenanigans, fans revel in them — so much so that Netflix has three more exclusive Sandler movies in the works.

For Lautner, whose non-Twilight films include the thrillers Abduction and Run the Tide, the chance to play things for giggles was both irresistible and pant-wettingly scary.

“When I read the script and the character of Lil’ Pete, I was absolutely terrified — there was no way I was doing it,” says Lautner.

“Then I thought about it and said, ’Because this scares me so much and I know it’s such a challenge, that’s a great reason to do it.’”

Lil’ Pete is a dim yet sweet guy with a gap-toothed smile and aw-shucks demeanour. One of six brothers who share a father — but nary a mother — he falls into a series of adventures with half-siblings played by Sandler, Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Rob Schneider and Luke Wilson.

“What I’ve always loved about acting the most is challenging myself to do all different kinds of roles. That’s why I wanted to do this, because it is something different,” says Lautner, who had a cameo in Sandler’s 2013 film Grown Ups 2 and co-starred in the BBC series Cuckoo in 2014.

“I definitely would not mind doing more comedies, but I would say what I’m looking for next is something different from that.”

A caveat: Any future challenges must be met fully clothed, for the most part. As Jacob Black in the Twilight films, Lautner was ever shirtless. Shirtless Jacob jumps off a cliff and into the water. Shirtless Jacob consoles pouty Bella Swan. Shirtless Jacob gets all angsty in the rain.

Taylor Lautner in The Twilight Saga: New Moon. [PNG]

The memories make Lautner laugh, and the 23-year-old admits some sartorial discussion before agreeing to his role in The Ridiculous 6.

“I said to Adam (Sandler) at the beginning, I was like, ‘As long as Lil’ Pete doesn’t have to take his shirt off.’ And he was like, ‘All right. That’s fine.’ So we left that to Mr. Terry Crews,” he says.

“Yeah. For like almost all of the roles I consider, I’m making sure that they’re not shirtless roles. Or if they are, it has to make complete sense.

“It’s not like Jacob Black, where he just decides to randomly take his shirt off for no reason.”

Everything is coming to an end! At least that’s what Hollywood wants us to think, given the multitude of films about the apocalypse. With global uncertainty, economic collapse and bloody international conflict, people seem so perturbed about impending disaster that it’s pouring out all over the screen.

But there’s something cathartic in seeing characters deal with it. To paraphrase a certain Michael Stipe lyric, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and even if we don’t feel fine, we’re doing better than those people on the screen.

HUNGRY FOR CHANGE

The leader of apocalypse narratives is The Hunger Games with a worldwide franchise gross of more than $2 billion. Its success has spawned a wave of post-apocalyptic fiction adaptations, which seem to be growing in greater numbers with look-alikes including Divergent and Maze Runner. What’s interesting about Hunger Games is each instalment has been more progressively socially minded. The impoverished citizens are placed into brutal survival games for the amusement of wealthy residents until the poor rise up. The penultimate instalment, Mockingjay — Part 1, was basically the two sides making political attack ads, leading to a final confrontation in Mockingjay — Part 2 this November.

Liam Hemsworth, left, and Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 [Lionsgate]

APOCALYPTIC ONSLAUGHT

This summer, two apocalyptic franchises were dusted off for big-screen reboots. Mad Max was redone with Fury Road. In 1981’s The Road Warrior, the commodity everyone was chasing after was gasoline. But in Fury, the prime resource is water. As natural resources shrink in our world, we see people in movies fighting for them. The other reboot was Terminator Genisys. In the original Terminator, the malicious world-ending computer system Skynet is a military computer gone rogue. But in Genisys¸ Skynet is hiding as an app that people willingly download. While 1980s audiences were more scared of military-inflicted nuclear annihilation, modern audiences see the end of the world happening through their phones.

HEROES OF THE DAY

Superhero movies also have the end of everything on their mind. The Avengers: Age of Ultron has a homicidal robot intelligence decreeing, “When the Earth starts to settle, God throws a stone at it.” Appropriately, his grand evil scheme involves wiping out humanity by creating an artificial meteor. Man of Steel (2013) delivers mass destruction as the finale — the repercussions of which will be explored in next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (everyone seems a little miffed at Superman for laying waste to an entire city). Last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past involves time travelling from a post-apocalyptic future to change history, and the next instalment of X-Men is subtitled … Apocalypse. Guess what happens.

Chris Evans, left, as Captain America/Steve Rogers, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor, in a scene of Avengers: Age Of Ultron [Disney/Marvel ]

HIP TO BE SCARED

Even indie movies are getting into the act. Z for Zechariah stars Chris Pine, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Margot Robbie as three survivors using the post-apocalyptic genre as a framework for a somewhat melodramatic romantic drama. The Toronto International Film Festival had Shia LaBeouf in Man Down, about a father searching for his kid in the ruins of society while offering insight into his fragile headspace. TIFF also had Into the Forest starring Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as two sisters at a remote house while the world ends. These movies reformat the apocalyptic genre into intimate character pieces. If viewers are freaked out about the world coming to an end, this shows how it would feel on an individual scale.

Game of Thrones [HBO ]

GOING DOWN (ON) THE TUBE

The end of the world is even extending to the small screen, on the most popular shows. HBO’s Game of Thrones is political infighting, beheading and bedding, but the overriding narrative — and the show’s catchphrase — is “Winter is coming,” with the deadly White Walkers advancing upon a hapless populace that mostly doesn’t believe they exist (aside from the show’s steadfast hero, John Snow, who is determined to stop the monsters). In AMC’s The Walking Dead, the end came via zombies and the show is about the society that emerges in the ruins. Not surprisingly, it’s a messy place and when the heroes find sanctuary it usually falls to pieces. Its spinoff, Fear the Walking Dead, is set at the onset of the zombie outbreak and the reason the world went to hell was a conflux of civil unrest and incredibly bad decision-making — which tends happen when the dead start walking.

Thankfully, there shouldn’t be a zombie virus, killer robots, or an impending space alien invasion anytime soon in the real world. Seeing all these disasters happening in films may be bizarrely comforting because hard as things seem, at least somebody makes it out alive. Maybe that could be us. Hopefully.

At the Toronto International Film Festival, the spotlight may be on splashy international films like the Johnny Depp-led Black Mass or Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic The Martian, but there are more than 80 short and feature-length films at the fest with Canadian talent in front and behind the camera. Here are a few highlights:

Hyena Road

After hitting it big on the TV series Due South as a crime-solving Mountie, Calgary-born Paul Gross has also pulled triple duty as writer, director and star of the films Men with Brooms and Passchendaele. TIFF will host the world premiere of his third directorial outing, Hyena Road, a gritty war drama about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and the complexities of dealing with the Taliban. The movie even has its own trippy and experimental behind-the-scenes account, Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton.

Forsaken

Starring Canadian thespian father-son duo Kiefer and Donald Sutherland, Forsaken is an Alberta-shot western about, not surprisingly, a father-son duo trying to reconnect and protect their town. It is the first feature directorial effort for Jon Cassar, who has won multiple TV directing awards in both Canada and the U.S., and worked with Kiefer on hundreds of episodes of 24. Kiefer and Donald haven’t done many roles together, but with Kiefer coming off 24: Live Another Day and Donald playing the big bad guy in the Hunger Games franchise, it could be interesting to see the duo tackling the Old West.

Born in Egypt and raised in B.C., Toronto director Atom Egoyan has a long list of acclaimed films, including Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. But he hit a snag in 2014 with the chilly reception of his kidnap thriller, The Captive. This latest film is a chance for a return to critical good graces. Remember stars renowned Toronto-born actor Christopher Plummer as a retirement home resident who travels across Canada and the U.S. to get revenge on the man who murdered his family.

Beeba Boys

Academy Award-nominated director Deepa Mehta (Water) helms Beeba Boys, a crime thriller about a family of Sikh crooks in Vancouver vying for the top of the drugs and gun-running game. Loosely based on the real-life story of crime lord “Bindy” Singh Johal, the movie features family drama, double-crosses and, obviously, gunfire. There are two trailers available: A safe-for-work trailer that shows the film as a slick Sikh version of Scarface, and a not-safe-for-work trailer that shows the movie’s colourful language and dark humour — like a Sikh Pulp Fiction.

Writer/Director Deepa Mehta’s latest is Beeba Boys [Getty Images]

Canadian directors helming U.S. movies

Quebec director Denis Villeneuve, who received praise for his brutal captive drama Prisoners, delivers the North American premiere of the drug cartel crime thriller Sicario, starring Josh Brolin and Emily Blunt as U.S. government agents and Benicio Del Toro as a nasty assassin fighting the war on drugs. Montreal-born director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) brings Demolition, with Jake Gyllenhaal as a man who loses his family and then engages in random acts of destruction with a companion, played by Naomi Watts.

Short Cuts

Dozens of short films from Canadian filmmakers are highlighted in the Short Cuts series. Former Postmedia film critic Katherine Monk makes her directorial debut with the DJ documentary Rock the Box. Toronto-born actress Mia Kirshner (24) stars with Aaron Abrams in the romantic entanglement short This Never Happened by Montreal director Mark Slutsky. Actor and director Don McKellar (Last Night) helms It’s Not You, a relationship short featuring members of the National Theatre School of Canada.

There are also bona fide oddball shorts like The Chickening, which is an animated take on The Shining … with chickens! Hamilton director Vivieno Caldienlli also has the horror comedy Portal to Hell!!! (yes, with three exclamation points), featuring the late, great “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” but these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

Movies

Big release on June 19: Inside Out

Big picture: Ever wanted to meet the little voices inside your head? Me neither. But Pixar’s animators decided to make the introductions anyway. They’ve personified the emotions of Riley, an 11-year-old girl: Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). If you’re wondering what an emotion looks like, just imagine the love child of a Smurf and a Muppet. When Riley’s life is uprooted by her dad’s new job, her emotions are running high and they struggle to guide her from Headquarters (her mind). Riley’s parents’ emotions also provide plenty of entertainment. Ever wondered what the inside of a man’s head looks like when his wife catches him not listening? It’s not pretty.

Forecast: They’re more than a feeling. From the creators of Up, Inside Out has all the makings of another animated classic, in no small part thanks to inspired casting. The hilarious Poehler and Kaling can take over for the voices in my head any day of the week.

Taylor Kitsch, background left, and Colin Farrell shown in a scene from Season 2 of True Detective. [HBO]

TV

Big event: True Detective (June 21, HBO)

Big picture: If the perpetually scowling lawmen of True Detective existed in the world of Inside Out, they’d be guided by Anger, Sadness, Depression, Hopelessness and Nihilism. The serial crime drama moves to SoCal for Season 2 with a whole new cast of depressing, dysfunctional characters. Yea! Sure, Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle will be missed. But the new crew steal from his melancholy, pseudo-philosophical playbook with musings like, “Sometimes your worst self is your best self.” A greasy-haired, forlorn Colin Farrell plays a detective whose puppet strings are pulled by both the mob and his corrupt superiors; Rachel McAdams is a straight-shooting female detective (both rare treats in this show); Taylor Kitsch is a troubled highway patrolmen and war vet; and Vince Vaughn plays a smooth-talking career criminal. A major crime causes their lives to begin to intersect (probably painfully slowly).

Forecast: The summer’s can’t-miss show. While everyone is focused on its big-name stars, watch for Kitsch, who shone so brightly on TV’s Friday Night Lights, to be this season’s Cohle. As for Vaughn: HBO gambled on a man who hasn’t really taken a role that required him to actually act since 1996 (Swingers). Maybe he finally wanted to play something other than middle-aged frat boys.

Honourable mention: The Astronaut Wives Club (June 18, ABC, 8 p.m.). Based on the non-fiction book by Lily Koppel, this new ’60s drama follows the wives of America’s pioneering astronauts. The constant threat of tragedy and a giant public spotlight bind the seven women together. “This astronaut wives stuff, toughens you,” one explains. That’s hard to believe given the amount of laughter, smiles, fancy parties, parades and cocktails on display. But after watching True Detective, you’ll be glad someone on TV is actually having fun.

Don’t expect a sophomore jinx from Walk Off the Earth. [John Woods/The Canadian Press]

Music

Big releases on June 16: Walk Off the Earth (Sing It All Away), Yukon Blonde (On Blonde)

Big picture: Walk Off the Earth doesn’t experience a sophomore jinx. They’re still most famous for their multi-player, one-guitar, viral video cover of Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know. But this album of originals delivers big, fun, genre-smashing pop that is impossible not to like. With songs like Heart Is a New Weapon and We Got Love, don’t expect the quintet to appear on the soundtrack of True Detective any time soon. Yukon Blonde’s indie power pop probably won’t be, either. Tough for actors to mope onscreen to the Vancouver group’s uptempo brand of fuzzy guitar rock with its addictive hooks, sweet harmonies and driving bass lines.

Forecast: Just ahead of Canada Day, two more reasons to feel true patriot love.

Honourable mention: Third Eye Blind (Dopamine), Adam Lambert (The Original High). Third Eye Blind looks to prove they’re more than just a ’90s nostalgia act with their fifth studio album. Lambert is still out to prove he is more than an American Idol contestant.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” but these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

Movies

Big release on June 12: Jurassic World

Big picture: At Disney World, visitors run the risk of being trampled by children and getting indigestion. At Jurassic World, visitors run the risk of being trampled by dinosaurs and causing their indigestion. The fourth instalment of the franchise — after two middling sequels — finds the park open for business. It’s the kind of place where you really want to pay attention to signs like, “Don’t feed the animals.”

Of course, humans decide to play God again. Bringing dinosaurs back from extinction wasn’t enough — they needed to create new dinosaurs. The park’s scientists genetically engineer a new attraction tested by a focus group: Indominus Rex, a dinosaur “designed to be bigger than the T-Rex.” They basically create a super-intelligent Godzilla and are then stupid enough to give the beast a name anyone would feel compelled to live up to. When the creature escapes while 20,000 tourists are on the island, the lucky dino is presented with an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Forecast: Jurassic Park left quite the legacy — our inability to take Jeff Goldblum seriously (or was that The Fly?), one of the worst professional sports team names ever, etc. But Jurassic World has Chris Pratt (The Lego Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy), Hollywood’s current Midas. Pratt stars as Owen, a dinosaur trainer by day and action hero by night. Last summer, Pratt battled aliens and now he’s charged with defending us from dinos gone wild. I imagine his bucket list is nearly complete. (But am I the only one that would have preferred Groot World, a giant theme park filled with Groot saplings from Guardians?)

The new series Dark Matter, is the brainchild of the same team that brought us Stargate and stars Canadian singer and actress, Melissa O’Neil. [Bell Media]

Television

Big event on June 12: Dark Matter (Space)

Big picture: A deep-space mystery. Six people wake up on a derelict starship with no memories of who they are and how they got there. My first guess is that they joined Captain Kirk on one of his intergalactic benders. But, sadly, this is not a new Star Trek series. The crew may have amnesia but they quickly display “dangerous” abilities. Who are they? Are they good guys or bad guys? What is their mission?

Based on a graphic novel, Dark Matter is created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, the creative team behind the Stargate franchise.
Their new series co-stars former Canadian Idol Melissa O’Neil, making her TV debut fresh of an award-winning stint in Broadway’s Les Miserables.
From reality TV to North America’s biggest stage … to an interplanetary mission! Not a bad career trajectory. At this rate, O’Neil will be helping Chris Pratt fight vampire pirates, or something, by summer 2016.

Forecast: The small screen is due for a new sci-fi saviour and this could be it. Dark Matter offers up a dystopian future where corporations own planets and wantonly exploit and devour their resources. (Wait a minute! That sounds suspiciously like the present.)

Of Monsters and Men have a new and winning release out called: Beneath The Skin. [Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images]

Music

Big release on June 9: Of Monsters and Men (Beneath The Skin)

Big picture: I’m pretty sure this band name was the working title of the original Jurassic Park. The Icelandic folk rockers are back with more tales of fierce animals, mystical heroes and Mother Nature run amok. Sure, co-vocalists Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson sound like characters on Game of Thrones. And even their song titles — Black Water, Thousand Eyes, Organs, I of the Storm, Wolves Without Teeth, sound poached from the pages of George R.R. Martin. But as long as this acclaimed group can put out albums faster than he can write books, we’ll be happy.

Forecast: Of Monsters and Men will get beneath your skin again with their sophomore effort. These Monsters aren’t under your bed, they’re on your playlist.

Honourable mention: No Joy (More Faithful). More joy from the Arts & Crafts label! No Joy releases their third album of shoegaze pop complete with powerful guitar riffs, dreamy harmonies and raw emotional intensity. One promo calls the album “hair-whipping guitar goddess rock music.” Before long, we may all be worshipping at their musical altar.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/pop-forecast-for-june-8-jurassic-world-dark-matter-monsters-and-men/feed0Jurassic Worldpostmedianews1 Melissa O’NeilOf Monsters and Men have a new and winning release out called: Beneath The Skin.San Andreas’ Dwayne Johnson rocks the disaster filmhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/san-andreas-dwayne-johnson-rocks-the-disaster-film
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/san-andreas-dwayne-johnson-rocks-the-disaster-film#respondTue, 26 May 2015 17:57:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=609223Saying that actor Dwayne Johnson has a few movies in his future is like calling The Rock an introverted wrestler.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/san-andreas-dwayne-johnson-rocks-the-disaster-film/feed0SAN ANDREASrgranatsteinGeorge Clooney on his Tomorrowland role: ‘Putting me in a summer movie is a very bold thought’http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/george-clooney-on-his-tomorrowland-role-putting-me-in-a-summer-movie-is-a-very-bold-thought
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/george-clooney-on-his-tomorrowland-role-putting-me-in-a-summer-movie-is-a-very-bold-thought#respondMon, 25 May 2015 19:09:31 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=609085George Clooney’s been dealing with inquiring minds since his ER days on TV.

Reporters’ questions used to focus on who the eligible bachelor was dating but since his recent marriage to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, Clooney’s coping with the inevitable parenthood question.

Whatever, the 55-year-old always handles the personal digging the same way; he side-steps it with a passive-aggressive scolding.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/george-clooney-on-his-tomorrowland-role-putting-me-in-a-summer-movie-is-a-very-bold-thought/feed0George Clooney Britt Robertson Raffey Cassidybbt1Nick Kroll exercises ‘dramatic muscle’ in Adult Beginnershttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/nick-kroll-exercises-dramatic-muscle-in-adult-beginners
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/nick-kroll-exercises-dramatic-muscle-in-adult-beginners#respondTue, 12 May 2015 15:03:46 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=607498Devoted followers of the raunchy FXX series, The League, know Nick Kroll plays the obsessive lawyer Rodney Ruxin, who participates with friends in a fantasy football league and likes to win at any cost. Some might remember the writer and actor from the now defunct Comedy Central sketch series, called Kroll Show, in which, he played a slew of demented dilettantes.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/nick-kroll-exercises-dramatic-muscle-in-adult-beginners/feed00_yk1cit3vbbt1Charlize Theron used ballerina training for Mad Max: Fury Road rolehttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/charlize-theron-used-ballerina-training-for-mad-max-fury-road-role
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/charlize-theron-used-ballerina-training-for-mad-max-fury-road-role#respondSun, 10 May 2015 17:52:49 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=607229Tom Hardy plays the iconic title character in Mad Max: Fury Road but Charlize Theron’s Furiosa is his equal. Think of them in the latest post-apocalyptic chase movie as the oddest of couples on the lam.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/charlize-theron-used-ballerina-training-for-mad-max-fury-road-role/feed0Film Summer Previewrgranatstein‘There are things you can’t fake’: Hot Pursuit’s Sofia Vergara on kissing Reese Witherspoonhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/hot-pursuits-sofia-vergara-on-kissing-reese-witherspoon-there-are-things-you-cant-fake
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/hot-pursuits-sofia-vergara-on-kissing-reese-witherspoon-there-are-things-you-cant-fake#respondTue, 05 May 2015 19:23:07 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=606523The Modern Family star has more going for her than the powerful one-two punch of being sexy and funny
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/hot-pursuits-sofia-vergara-on-kissing-reese-witherspoon-there-are-things-you-cant-fake/feed0Film Review Hot PursuitrgranatsteinStar Wars Day! Yes, May the 4th be with youhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/star-wars-day-yes-may-the-4th-be-with-you
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/star-wars-day-yes-may-the-4th-be-with-you#respondMon, 04 May 2015 17:03:04 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=606216

It’s not just a pun.

“May the 4th be with you” is a full-fledged unofficial holiday, “Star Wars Day.”

Well, if Hollywood is calling the shots.

Enjoy this visit of the Stormtroopers to the Toronto Sun building.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/star-wars-day-yes-may-the-4th-be-with-you/feed01_8jxvoi3ppostmedianews1Avengers: Age of Ultron’s Cobie Smulders on Maria Hill: ‘She’s like a one-woman team’http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/avengers-age-of-ultrons-cobie-smulders-on-maria-hill-shes-like-a-one-woman-team
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/avengers-age-of-ultrons-cobie-smulders-on-maria-hill-shes-like-a-one-woman-team#respondThu, 30 Apr 2015 22:56:13 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=605769Vancouver’s Cobie Smulders is relishing her tour of duty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As the determined Maria Hill, she co-starred in the superhero flicks The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldierand showed up on two episodes of the ABC series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.Smulders reprises her part in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The 33-year-old former model sat down with Bob Thompson to talk about life among living gods.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/avengers-age-of-ultrons-cobie-smulders-on-maria-hill-shes-like-a-one-woman-team/feed01_y70mad89rgranatsteinRussell Crowe goes back home for directorial debut in the Water Divinerhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/russell-crowe-goes-back-home-for-his-directorial-debut
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/russell-crowe-goes-back-home-for-his-directorial-debut#respondFri, 24 Apr 2015 17:05:55 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=604781Even Russell Crowe needs to complete himself. As a storyteller, Crowe thinks he has with his directorial debut, The Water Diviner.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/russell-crowe-goes-back-home-for-his-directorial-debut/feed0Film Review The Water DivinerrgranatsteinDesigner Laura Siegel headlines ethical fashion doc Traceable (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/designer-laura-siegel-headlines-ethical-fashion-doc-traceable-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/designer-laura-siegel-headlines-ethical-fashion-doc-traceable-with-video#respondWed, 22 Apr 2015 17:32:30 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=604283Laura Siegel attended the posh Parsons School of Design in New York City and Central Saint Martins in London. But it was in the rough-hewn landscape of Thailand that the Toronto-born fashion designer’s craft was irrevocably shaped.

“I had scootered to visit this old temple or palace in the middle of nowhere, but it was closed,” she recalls. “That’s when I encountered a woman crocheting on the side of the road. She didn’t speak English, but somehow I asked if she’d be willing to teach me.”

Siegel spent the next few days in the woman’s home learning the centuries-old art.

“I was terrible. I don’t think she was impressed with my skills, but I just thought it was so special that she was so good at what she did and she did it every day.

“I just felt the need to bring work to these people,” she says. “I knew that down the road I would be sending designs to manufacturers to make my clothes, and why couldn’t I just send them to these people who are so good at what they do, but it’s in such a beautiful work environment and it’s something that means so much to them?”

Laura Siegel, centre, sits among a group of artisans. Siegel is featured in the ethical fashion documentary Traceable. [MTV/Bell]

That experience outside of Chiang Mai, part of a year off school between her third and fourth year at Parsons, set Siegel on the road to developing ethically handcrafted collections in collaboration with artisans in Asia and Latin America.

Siegel is at the centre of the new documentary Traceable, which follows her as she visits locations in India to develop her 2013 fall/winter collection. It airs on MTV, Bravo, M3 and E! on Friday, known in the industry as Fashion Revolution Day and the two-year anniversary of the Bangladesh clothing factory collapse.

Written, directed and produced by Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Sharpe, Traceable questions the disconnect between the origins of mass-produced garments and the people who create and buy them. For Siegel, it’s also a chance to spotlight the craftwork of different cultures.

“I saw artisans everywhere I went and it seemed to be ingrained in the culture. We connected on a level because of my design background and the craft that they’ve probably known since they were a kid, and was probably passed down from generation to generation,” she says.

“I realized that these people should be used in our industry, especially since in a lot of cases the crafts are on their way to becoming extinct. Just in general, things being made by hand are becoming extinct. I saw this as an opportunity to change the way things were done.”

Laura Siegel, left, works with artisans in Asia and Latin America to make ethically handcrafted collections. [MTV/Bell]

True, it isn’t easy bucking a system that’s driven by secrecy, competition and profit. At one point in Traceable, Siegel is in India sorting out logistics for her collection as the date to present it back home looms near, and she debates cancelling it altogether.

“I’m not able to be in 10 places at the same time, so we’ve recently hired a production manager overseas and I work with an organization that manages artisans in different regions. But it’s difficult coordinating everything from sampling to production in all these different places,” she says.

“And just finding the right artisan groups to work with. You want to be supporting artisans who have dedication and heart and love what they do. You want to make sure that their working conditions are great, that they’re getting paid fairly, that they’re able to provide consistent quality.”

But, she says, the challenges are worth it. Especially as the deadly 2013 Bangladesh factory collapse, which killed more than a thousand workers, creeps further and further out of the news cycle.

“It is something that’s so easy to talk about for a moment and then you forget, but I’ve got to give credit to everybody who’s continuing the conversation. I think the challenge is finding out what those solutions are going to be. What’s feasible, especially in an industry that’s so set in its ways?

“It’s going to be hard to really change unless you can prove that there is another way of doing this and you can still create a viable business.”

Traceable airs Friday, April 24, on MTV/Bravo/M3/E!

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/designer-laura-siegel-headlines-ethical-fashion-doc-traceable-with-video/feed0Traceablemhank2012TraceableTraceableHow The Age of Adaline’s Blake Lively got creative while researching her rolehttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/blake-lively-got-creative-with-research-for-the-age-of-adaline
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/blake-lively-got-creative-with-research-for-the-age-of-adaline#respondTue, 21 Apr 2015 15:42:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=604079It was ingenue interrupted for Blake Lively when she took a two-year acting break, but she wasn’t being high maintenance.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/blake-lively-got-creative-with-research-for-the-age-of-adaline/feed0111105_blakergranatsteinPop Forecast for April 20: Age of Adaline, Happyish, Alabama Shakeshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/pop-forecast-for-april-20-age-of-adaline-happyish-alabama-shakes
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/pop-forecast-for-april-20-age-of-adaline-happyish-alabama-shakes#respondSun, 19 Apr 2015 04:02:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=603425Chris Lackner

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” but these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

Movies

Big release on April 24: The Age of Adaline

Big picture: It’s Dorian Gray meets Frankenstein meets Benjamin Button (minus the getting younger) meets Gossip Girl (minus the gossip and other girls). Blake Lively is Adaline, a beautiful woman frozen at age 29 after a freak accident. For once, the culprit is nothing absurd like a vampire. Adaline only accidentally drives off a bridge into a lake, drowns, has her submerged car hit by lightning, and inexplicably becomes immortal (it’s clear no scientists were consulted on the script). On the run from sinister government types, and afraid to let herself love someone she’ll be forced to watch die, Adaline is in self-exposed exile — until she meets a handsome philanthropist played by Michiel Huisman. (Michiel has that effect on woman — his characters have recently proved irresistible to heroines on Nashville, Orphan Black and Game of Thrones. I’d hate to see that man’s chapstick budget). Harrison Ford plays the Adaline’s bygone love interest — and the father of her new love interest. (At this point, Ford wants to see himself play Han Solo again even more than fans).

Forecast: Will Adaline let herself love again (yes)? Will it cause trouble (yes)? Will there by a threesome with Ford (no)? What else can I tell you? I think The Age of Adaline would have been a lot better if was called Highlander: Age of Adaline and involved Lively beheading other immortals.

Honourable mention: Little Boy: This family film about the power of imagination is far too earnest for me to mock. It’s about a little boy hoping to “will” his father home from war who then develops seemingly unbelievable powers — picture a young Magneto from X-Men — minus the death-wish for humanity. (I bet Harrison Ford occasionally tries to “will” away the fact he made that fourth Indiana Jones movie).

Television

Big event: Happyish (CraveTV, April 26)

Big picture: It’s Don Draper — only more modern (slightly) and with a sense of humour. Thom Payne is a cranky, witty middle-aged ad executive whose life is thrown upside down when he lands a new 25-year-old boss. While this role was initially meant for the gone-too-soon Philip Seymour Hoffman, North American audiences might finally learn to fully appreciate the brilliant Brit that stepped into the lead: Steve Coogan. After The Trip movie series, the Alan Partridge TV series and his dramatic stint with Helen Mirren in the Oscar-nominated Philomena, Coogan has proven his versatility. It will be a pleasure to see his manic neuroses on screen weekly in this new dramedy. It’s being billed as the first Showtime series available only on CraveTV, an online streaming service available to select Bell TV subscribers. Bradley Whitford and Kathryn Hahn co-star.

Forecast: Happyish will deliver on its title and more. If you don’t get CraveTV, do some creative Internet searching. This one is worth the hunt.

Honourable mention: Inside Amy Schumer (Apr. 21, Comedy Network,). She isn’t for the faint of heart or politically correct, but she might be one of the most gifted female comedians working today. The third-season of her critically acclaimed, risqué comedy series is reason to feel happyish.

Music

Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes. [ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images]

Big release on April 21: Alabama Shakes (Sound + Color)

Big picture: Lead singer Brittany Howard’s voice is so spellbinding. My theory is she’s the daughter of Barry White and an angel – secretly, inexplicably raised by Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin (which would also make for a great cable drama). The southern rocker’s sophomore effort finds a much wider sonic palette than in their acclaimed debut. Rock, soul, deep fried funk, swampy gospel … it’s all here. And it all sounds damn good.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang, but these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

Movies

Big releases on April 17: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2; Unfriended

Big picture: Paul Blart is the new version of Die Hard’s John McClane — only not half as funny. Kevin James reprises his role as the oafish mall cop. I wish I could say, “What took them so long?” — but six years was a good break. As many sequels before it, this one heads to Vegas with our hero attending a security guard expo and stumbling upon a major heist. And stumble he does. Often. If Blart isn’t getting kicked through a car window by a horse, he’s punching a bird in the face — or accidentally hitting an old lady in the stomach. Good times.

Meanwhile, Unfriended finally delivers a horror movie about one of most terrifying things modern humans experience: unfriending on social media. As the film’s tagline intones, “Online, your memories last forever … but so do your mistakes.” (For further proof, just Google the words David Hasselhoff, drunk and burger.) This modern twist on the ghost in the machine finds a young woman getting even with her former friends via a social-media chat room. The tech-savvy poltergeist wants to know who posted the video that destroyed her mortal life and decides to gruesomely slaughter everyone in the narcissistic Skype group until the answer is forthcoming.

Forecast: Sadly, I fear Paul Blart 3 will be with us sooner than we think. As for Unfriended, I think we should all just go back to communicating by handwritten letters. Problem solved. With no machines to haunt, maybe vengeful spirits can go after more deserving targets — like mall cops.

Big picture: What happened to becoming a hero the old-fashioned way, like being bitten by a radioactive spider or getting accidentally shot with a gamma ray? In The Messenger, five people are hit by a mysterious energy pulse from outer space and transformed into angels of the apocalypse. These aren’t your Michael Landon, Highway to Heaven angel types, or cute little cherubs. The Messenger is like Heroes meets Angels in America meets CW hokum. Essentially, five strangers — a preacher, a scientist, a mother, a son and a fugitive — must fend off the devil and prevent Armageddon.

Meanwhile, Canada’s own brilliant Tatiana Maslany returns for more clone wars on Orphan Black. This time she won’t hog all the screen time and all the character credits, as a new line of deadly male clones named Castor (Ari Millen) have entered into the mix. Maslany deserves the occasional break on set — you can’t play almost every character on a show without suffering a little burnout.

Forecast: The ratings will kill The Messenger, but adopt Orphan Black into your viewing schedule if you haven’t already. Will Maslany’s many clones finally find out the truth of who they are? (I’m hoping for a guest appearance by Mulder and Scully)

Music

Joey Burns of Calexico. [Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images]

Big release on April 14: Calexico (Edge of the Sun)

Big picture: Calexico is like a fine wine. The Southwestern-infused alt-folkies keep getting better with age — and they are best when shared with friends. For their ninth album, they team up with musicians from Iron & Wine, Band of Horses — not to mention Canadian indie goddess Neko Case. With influences ranging from mariachi and rockabilly to alt-country and classic jazz, Calexico could fit in at any summer festival — or as the background music to any summer moment.

Forecast: Calexico’s Edge of the Sun won’t leave you burned — as long as you like good music.

First, acclaimed Canadian jazz pianist and vocalist gets poppy on her new project — and the end result is glowing. Meanwhile, fellow native songwriter Terra Lightfoot delivers one of the year’s best (apologies for those who were betting on the Paul Blart 2 motion picture soundtrack). Unique voice. Killer guitar. Lightfoot is an artist running wildly toward a breakthrough.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/pop-forecast-for-april-13-paul-blart-orphan-black-are-back/feed0Kevin Jamespostmedianews1Joey BurnsInside Out: Behind the scenes of Disney’s new animated filmhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/a-mix-of-emotions-the-key-to-pixars-inside-out-behind-the-scenes-of-disneys-new-animated-film
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/a-mix-of-emotions-the-key-to-pixars-inside-out-behind-the-scenes-of-disneys-new-animated-film#respondTue, 07 Apr 2015 18:08:48 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=601737Inside Out is the comedy that takes place in the mind of 11-year-old girl, Riley. She is defined by the emotions of Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), and Anger (Lewis Black). In the movie, all five of Riley’s emotions attempt to control her decisions after her family relocates from a small-town in Minnesota to the big city of San Francisco.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/a-mix-of-emotions-the-key-to-pixars-inside-out-behind-the-scenes-of-disneys-new-animated-film/feed0INSIDE OUTrgranatsteinWhile We’re Young’s Naomi Watts’ rules of engagementhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/while-were-youngs-naomi-watts-rules-of-engagement
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/while-were-youngs-naomi-watts-rules-of-engagement#respondThu, 02 Apr 2015 16:49:43 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=600935As a rule, Naomi Watts issues a mandate before accepting appropriate roles. The movie has to be shot in New York or filmed during the summer near her Big Apple home. The reason is fundamental. Currently, her role as mother to Sasha, 7, and Samuel, 6, and wife to actor Liev Schreiber is a priority. So far, the arrangement is working in her favour personally and professionally.
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/while-were-youngs-naomi-watts-rules-of-engagement/feed0Naomi WattsrgranatsteinFurious 7, reviewed: May its crimes against cinema continue for years to comehttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/furious-7-reviewed-may-its-crimes-against-cinema-continue-for-years-to-come
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/furious-7-reviewed-may-its-crimes-against-cinema-continue-for-years-to-come#respondThu, 02 Apr 2015 16:43:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=600932Furious 7 commits its fair share of cinematic crimes. There’s its blatant disregard for the laws of physics (cars can just fall from high in the sky without breaking apart under pressure?)
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/furious-7-reviewed-may-its-crimes-against-cinema-continue-for-years-to-come/feed0FILE: TMZ Is Reporting That Paul Walker Of The Fast And The Furious Is Dead At 40rgranatsteinInsurgent’s Shailene Woodley has three charmed co-stars (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/insurgents-shailene-woodley-has-three-charmed-co-stars-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/insurgents-shailene-woodley-has-three-charmed-co-stars-with-video#respondThu, 19 Mar 2015 20:10:48 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=598446LOS ANGELES — Shailene Woodley seems to be a lucky charm for her three male co-stars in the Divergent movies. How so?

Theo James, Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort are advancing nicely in the celebrity world of high-profile movie roles.

Elgort returns to play Caleb, who is Tris’s (Woodley) brother in the second sci-fi film instalment, The Divergent Series: Insurgent. And he earned rave reviews for his role as the cancer-stricken patient opposite Woodley in the hit drama The Fault in Our Stars last year.

Theo James continues as Tris’s love interest Four, and will be seen next in Johnny Depp’s upcoming thriller London Fields.

Miles Teller, who co-starred with Woodley in 2013’s The Spectacular Now, is back playing the troublemaking Peter in Insurgent after his featured role in Whiplash last year. And he just wrapped his Mr. Fantastic part in the Fantastic Four reboot set for an August release.

All the young adult actors will reunite for the two-part Allegiant, the third book in the Veronica Roth trilogy, which will be made into two films, out in 2016 and 2017.

Meanwhile, there is Insurgent. Her parents dead, Tris, with newly acknowledged boyfriend, Four, by her side, is determined to overthrow Erudite despot Jeanine (Kate Winslet) and dismantle the city-state’s oppressive faction system.

Actors Theo James, left, and Shailene Woodley [The Associated Press]

New to the proceedings are Oscar-honoured actors Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts; Spencer plays the leader of the hippie-like faction called Amity and Watts is head of the Factionless rebels.

Certainly, the cast and crew of Insurgent wondered about the potential impact of Robert Schwentke replacing director Neil Burger, who had helmed the first film, Divergent. Schwentke has built his reputation on stylized action movies such as the 2005 thriller Flightplan and the 2010 spy comedy Red.

“I had a good time with Robert,” said Elgort of the new director. “We talked about my character’s arc, and I realized that sure, he’s a big action director but he’s an actors’ director, too.”

Indeed, the filmmaker spent as much time with the villains as he did with the heroes in Insurgent.

As the revolution progresses, for instance, Caleb and Peter fall into the former not the latter category. Teller said his portrayal of Peter was specific; “every movie needs an instigator.”

Caleb is especially noteworthy for his betrayal, but Elgort understood, with assistance from Schwentke, that his motivation made sense.

“(Caleb) makes a decision because he thinks they’re wrong,” he said of Tris and her rebel followers. “They want to start a war, assassinate Jeanine, and he thinks they’re crazy.

“Caleb’s an Erudite (the intelligent faction), and as an Erudite, he’s looked up to Jeanine for so long he’s sort of been brainwashed by her.”

The confrontations must continue, however. It meant that James and Woodley had to be in shape for the battles endured by Four and Tris.

In fact, Four has some furious hand-to-hand combat confrontations in Insurgent.

“We jumped right into the action,” said James who made his Hollywood debut in 2012’s Underworld: Awakening with Kate Beckinsale.

James said that his most difficult scenes were opposite Naomi Watts, who plays Four’s mother Evelyn, in the second film.

“She’s playing my mom but she’s a babe, so I had to get past that,” he confessed.

Then there was Teller. He had a few sequences of fight distress as Peter.

But Elgort had to make sure his Caleb was anything but capable of defending himself. “I’m a very physical guy,” said Elgort. “I rock climb and play basketball, but if you watch the way Caleb runs in the film, he looks like he will trip over something. So it was a conscious decision.”

Meanwhile, James and Woodley made sure the blossoming love between Four and Tris didn’t get lost in the mayhem.

“I like that fact that (the characters) have mutual respect for each other,” he said.

When in doubt the three actors had Woodley to rely on. They are fans of her personal and physical strength and her unassuming camaraderie with everybody on set.

“She’s an open book,” said Elgort of Woodley. “Most of the things she wants people to know she tells, but she keeps other things private.”

That’s right, Liam Neeson, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Denzel Washington and Harrison Ford are making second debuts in their golden years, and so far their shoot-’em up films are turning to gold.

To reverse the Danny Glover line from Lethal Weapon, they aren’t getting too old for this …

Sure, needing naps on set between fight scenes might be required, but that’s fine.

The bottom line is their bottom lines. Their action movies are making loads of money, mostly thanks to huge numbers at the foreign box office, but who’s counting? The studio suits are.

In other words, stand by for the onslaught of octogenarian running and jumping movies, minus canes and walkers.

These are the five actors of a certain age who dared to stand up for themselves, slowly, with a little help from their still-adoring international friends:

Harrison Ford [Getty Images]

HARRISON FORD

He’s been a man of movie action since showing up as Han Solo in Star Wars in 1977 and then as Indiana Jones four years later in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sequels for each franchise followed, but who would have guessed Ford, at 72, would be active in the action department (and still ticking after surviving a recent plane crash in Los Angeles).

A rickety, but still operating Ford, returns as Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, set for a Christmas release. And he is expected to revisit his Rick Deckard role in a Blade Runner sequel.

Just don’t expect Ford to wax poetic about his return to form or his icon status.

“I don’t know what an icon does except stand in a corner quietly accepting every one’s attention,” he said. “I like to work, so there’s no utility in being an icon.”

He earned an Oscar for his corrupt Training Day cop, but he emoted more furiously than he fought in that movie. He’s also been a Man on Fire killer and The Book of Eli punisher.

Last year’s revenge picture, The Equalizer, put the 60-year-old back into the action ring, playing a former black-ops agent taking on the Russian mob.

He’s reteaming with filmmaker Antoine Fuqua, who directed him in Training Day and The Equalizer, for a remake of the western The Magnificent Seven. Fuqua said that action or not, the actor brings his A-game and all the energy he can muster.

“It was a reminder of what a great actor he is,” the director said of their Equalizer reunion.

Bruce Willis [The Associated Press]

BRUCE WILLIS

Some action franchises die hard — Die Hard, for instance, as in 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard. North American audiences stayed away but the international crowd supported it big time, which means the Die Hard series lives.

Before that, Willis, 60, enjoyed an unexpected rejuvenation with the 2010 spy comedy RED (stands for retired, extremely dangerous). The movie earned a decent return and great reviews (spawning the required sequel), and even Willis was surprised by the finished product.

“I was a little more confused filming the first RED because it felt like we were trying to do so many things at the same time,” Willis said promoting RED 2. “There was comedy, action, and romance, but somehow it seemed to work out.”

He pushed the senior citizen boundaries with The Expendables trilogy. How? He featured an all-star cast of action hero retreads and hoped they wouldn’t blow. They didn’t. They were motivated.

“I’m not ready to sit at home and play with Pomeranians 12 hours a day,” said 68-year-old Stallone. “Actors don’t want to retire. They’re usually forced to retire. It’s a sad thing: You get better as you get older, but you might not remember as much dialogue.”

So get ready for The Expendables 4, which will return to the franchise R-rated shenanigans as old soldiers of fortune taking on another series of over-the-hill villains.

Let’s face it, if Stallone can return to do Rocky (as a trainer, not a boxer) in the movie Creed this fall, why not another Expendables?

Liam Neeson: The way Neeson tells it, the Taken offer from filmmaker Luc Besson was a gift he wouldn’t refuse. The 62-year-old thought that a few weeks in Paris enjoying some bistro food and French wine might be an enjoyable experience.

Little did Neeson know at the time that he would be feeding his bank account, too, after the trilogy of Takens earned a whopping $890 million US at the box office world wide.

And don’t expect Neeson to be offended by the recently coined “geri-action” word aimed at his (and Stallone’s) career rebirth as a gunman of a certain age.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/neeson-stallone-willis-the-golden-age-of-geri-action-with-video/feed0Film Review Run All Nightbbt1Harrison Ford The EqualizerBruce Willis Grudge MatchInsurgent’s Shailene Woodley leads by example (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/insurgents-shailene-woodley-leads-by-example-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/insurgents-shailene-woodley-leads-by-example-with-video#respondThu, 19 Mar 2015 16:19:01 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=598181LOS ANGELES — Shailene Woodley went from a promising performer to a happening headliner after the release last year of the young adult sci-fi epic Divergent.

The 23-year-old’s back as Tris with the second film called The Divergent Series: Insurgent. (Veronica Roth’s third novel in the trilogy, Allegiant, will be made into two films opening in 2016 and 2017.)

In the latest post-apocalyptic adventure, Tris’s parents are dead but she’s determined to lead a revolt against Erudite despot Jeanine (Kate Winslet).

With her boyfriend Four (Theo James) by her side, Tris, an illegal Divergent, is also determined to destroy the faction system based on perceived abilities.

Key to that, and to the revolution, just might be a box containing a secret message discovered in the rubble of Tris’s parent’s home.

New to the series are two Oscar-honoured actresses. Octavia Spencer plays the leader of the hippie-like faction Amity and Naomi Watts is head of the Factionless rebels.

As comfortable as Woodley seemed to be in the role of the heroine, she had to cope, at first, with a few Insurgent alterations.

Shailene Woodley [The Associated Press]

For one thing, Divergent director Neil Burger was replaced by action director Robert Schwentke, who made a name for himself shaping the Bruce Willis spy comedy Red. For another, the actress had matured between Divergent and Insurgent.

The director dilemma was resolved after the first few days of filming Insurgent in Atlanta, Ga.

Schwentke “is a genuinely warm human being,” Woodley said. “He doesn’t have an ego and he’s open to collaboration, and he took our opinions into account, which is really a blessing.

“He is also committed to having fun on the job, which a lot of people forget on any job.”

Returning to the head space of Tris took Woodley a period of adjustment.

“I had grown in a year, and I thought going back into the (Tris) mindset would be simple but my mindset had changed,” Woodley said. “So I had to go back to where I was a year ago to get into (the right) mindset.”

Physically, the actress was up for the challenge again — with a few variations on the theme.

“The training for the first movie was a lot of choreography and fight training,” she said. “(Insurgent) was more about fitness.”

Still, the latest movie came with a few close calls. One involved a simulated dream scene when Tris is balancing herself on a house floating through the air and tilted on a 90-degree angle. Woodley had the appropriate safety harness but the sequence had her complete focus just the same.

“It was a really rad experience when Tris is chasing the house,” she said.

On the odd side of things that day: “We had four or five stunt doubles with short hair and wearing the exact same outfits (as mine). It was really funny.”

On the serious side, at one critical point in shooting; “I thought if I don’t grab this pole, I know I’m not going to get hurt, but I am going to be dangling in the air and get this really crazy wedgie.”

Luckily, for all involved, there were no incidents or injuries and the star took the scene in stride.

Certainly, Watt admired Woodley’s perseverance and her leadership during filming.

“She made me feel immediately welcome and went out of her way to do it,” said the newcomer to the series.

Watt was amazed by all of the young actors in the movie, who seemed to share a one-for-all spirit.

“I was really impressed with how disciplined all these young actors are,” she said. “It was grounded in truth and the obvious respect they had for each other.”

And it all started with Woodley, who is one of the few child actors to make the transition into adulthood with few dysfunctional bumps along the way.

‘I like to keep some things in my life sacred. Apart from that, I’m a very open person.’

She first caught Hollywood’s attention as the lead in the series The Secret Life of an American Teenager and then rose to prominence acting opposite George Clooney in the Oscar-honoured The Descendants.

Besides Divergent, Woodley also starred last year opposite Ansel Elgort (he plays her brother in the Divergent series) in the weepie drama The Fault in Our Stars, which scooped up more than $306 million worldwide.

In the aftermath of the recent fame and fortune, she tries to stay connected to who she is.

“I’m kind of an obvious person,” she said. “I like to keep some things in my life sacred. Apart from that, I’m a very open person, so I feel like what you see is kind of who I am always.”

The time-consuming Divergent series has taught her a valuable lesson, though.

“I have learned what’s important to me, because you only have six or seven hours at home between work days,” Woodley said.

“You discover what you cherish and you learn who is important in your life. And when you have one phone call to make a day, you know who to call.”

The proof is in The Gunman. Penn produces, co-writes and stars in the shoot ’em up directed by Taken filmmaker Pierre Morel, who launched Liam Neeson on his new movie path. But Penn said his latest film choice was more about coincidence than career move.

“I didn’t think it was considered a new trend (to do) what I call geri-action,” said the 54-year-old, coining a word for the trending geriatric sub-genre.

Still, the Taken comparison can’t be denied, although the headliner agreed to disagree.

In The Gunman, Penn plays a former special-forces soldier turned military contractor who flees the Congo for London after a hit. Later, he realizes the assassination team is being eliminated one by one, so to save himself he tries to find out why.

“The Gunman is a movie about a very conflicted man killing very bad men largely in service of himself,” Penn said. But in the Liam Neeson Taken movies, “you have a six-foot-four melodically voiced masculine figure who is a very good man fighting strictly for his children.”

Landing all four acclaimed actors had a great deal to do with a persuasive Penn. He confirmed that he phoned each of them with an invitation to come aboard. As a writer, he revised scenes to suit their specific needs when they signed on.

Apparently, the extra effort was worth it for the two-time best actor Oscar winner for 2003’s Mystic River portrayal and 2008’s Milk.

“They are some of the best actors working, period,” Penn said. “We had a great time working with them.”

He also ensured his soldier portrayal was realistic by training closely with former special-forces teams and military contractors “to get everything as close as possible” to their operational drills.

Appearing shirtless often in The Gunman required Penn to commit to months of dieting and weight training, yet he refused to detail his regimen.

In another sequence, his soldier of fortune surfs. And yes, that was Penn surfing.

“There were a lot of (edits),” he said. “We had a very short window in which to shoot that in the right light.”

He was more enthusiastic about discussing his character’s unique fighting style — the Krav Maga self-defence system used by the Israeli military.

“I was interested in the Krav Maga style of fighting early on,” Penn said. “It has no root in sport, and it was much more martial than art. And I thought it would be a tactical advantage in the world of those operators, so again it was an accuracy issue.”

The Congo sub-plot in the film focused on relief workers helping dispossessed residents. And those scenes certainly reflected Penn’s active involvement in the Haiti crisis post-earthquake in 2010.

“We are now in the all-time record breaking humanitarian crisis in terms of displaced people in the world and other issues and conflicts,” he said. “I have a feeling that this is going to be filtering in to a lot of peoples’ filming systems … so there was the seed of it in there that I had some personal investment in.”

Whether movie fans will embrace Penn’s Gunman has yet to be decided.

“If I tried to guess what movie would be popular with an audience, either a movie I saw or a movie I participated in, I would be wrong every single time,” said Penn. “It’s not that I wouldn’t invest in the culture of that concern, but I have no skill set for it.”

Meanwhile, Penn finds himself in more familiar territory fighting for “a proper release date” for his latest directorial effort called The Last Face.

“As a director, the process on each movie is quite different,” he said. “I’ve worked with much less experienced actors and others who were more experienced actors, and you approach it very differently relative to that.”

Or at least it seemed that way during a recent L. A. media gathering for Penn’s action picture The Gunman, which opens March 20.

Exhibit A in the personality transition: a reporter tried to side-step the no-personal-questions edict with a cloaking effort by asking if Penn had a tour guide when he filmed The Last Face in South Africa.

Of course, Penn’s girlfriend is South African-born Charlize Theron who co-starred in The Last Face, which was directed by Penn.

“You’re asking me what did I feel about South Africa or who my tour guide might have been?” said a polite Penn.

“Here’s the thing. I’m pretending I’m not me for a second. And I’m reading something. Do I want to read about whether or not somebody’s girlfriend was their tour guide – I don’t.”

He added with a sly smirk: “There’s good restaurants (in South Africa). You can find them if you get the right tour guide.”

Exhibit B; another reporter asked for a reaction to the fact that some minority communities were offended by Penn’s “green card” reference to Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu just before he announced Birdman won best picture at last month’s Academy Awards.

“Who gave this son of a (expletive) his green card?” Penn had said at the Oscar show.

Iñárritu directed Penn in the 2003 movie 21 Grams and they have remained close, so Penn said he was giving a special shout out to his buddy.

“I think that when somebody as special as Alejandro makes a film as special as Birdman,” Penn said.

“And that if he has a friend onstage that, maybe that friend wants to let him know he won privately for a moment, before the room knows…”

So should the critics of his ‘green card’ question lighten up?

“Yeah, I think they could be a little bit more cheerful,” said Penn of the protesters.

“My feeling about that is when you identify yourself with fundamentalist thoughts or identity seeking that pursues a common enemy, (then) you’re very likely to miss irony and you will render yourself a foolish individual…”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-is-sean-penn-a-mellowing-fellow-thanks-to-charlize-theron/feed0Sean Penn in The Gunmanbbt1Run All Night’s Liam Neeson reborn as action hero (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/run-all-nights-liam-neeson-reborn-as-action-hero-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/run-all-nights-liam-neeson-reborn-as-action-hero-with-video#respondThu, 12 Mar 2015 20:10:29 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=597325Hollywood pundits never guessed that Liam Neeson would become an action figure. At 62, he’s transformed into exactly that since Taken in 2008.

Mind you, Neeson, six-foot-four, is a former boxer, so the physical roles seem to suit him and his accountant.

He was handsomely paid to play the convincingly vengeful black-ops family man in all three Taken movies, which scooped up more than $890 million at the box office worldwide.

Last winter, he played a disgraced cop turned private detective on the trail of serial killers in A Walk Among the Tombstones.

In his latest shoot ’em up, Run All Night, Neeson is Jimmy Conlon, an alcoholic New York hit man who goes on the lam with his son (Joel Kinnaman) when he inadvertently shoots the son of his mob boss (Ed Harris).

Most of the movie was filmed in New York at night, capturing the seamier side of the city that never sleeps — with Neeson in the middle of it all.

Liam Neeson, left, and Joel Kinnaman in Run All Night. [Warner Bros. Pictures]

It’s not as if the Northern Ireland-born actor entirely abandoned the lighter side for more lucrative running and jumping and ducking fare.

He was the voice of Bad Cop/Good Cop/Pa Cop in the hit animated comedy The Lego Movie in 2014. He also co-starred in the raunchy farce A Million Ways to Die in the West — but we won’t hold that against him.

For something a little bit different, he’s playing a tree, thanks to performance capture, in the upcoming thriller fantasy called A Monster Calls, which opens next year.

“I believe I am going to be in a very sexy wet suit with dots all over me,” he said.

Neeson, who still sports an Irish lilt, lives in New York with his sons, 19-year-old Micheál and 18-year-old Daniel.

As an Irishman of philosophical bent, he knows how to take the good filming news with the bad. A Walk Among the Tombstones and Run All Night were both shot at his home base in New York, but both were mostly night shoots, which meant working often into the early hours of the morning.

Luckily, both characters were a little haggard and disoriented, which played into how the actor felt.

“Your whole body does an about-face,” he said of the after-hours scheduling.

On the plus side, he stays action-ready at all times.

Liam Neeson stars in Run All Night [(Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)]

Although Neeson stopped sparring a few years ago, he still hangs out at boxing clubs. He does the heavy bag, some cardio and strength workouts. He also watches what he eats.

And there is his detox liquid diet. “I do it every three or four years to clean myself up,” he said.

On other hand, he agrees that playing tipsy is almost as tough as looking convincing in fire fights. In fact, Neeson’s character in Run All Night pretends to be Santa in one sequence but is clearly drunk as he asks kids what they want for Christmas.

The actor borrowed a technique from acclaimed and dearly departed Irish actor Cyril Cusack. Cusack was subtle in his drunk approach and never overplayed it. (And, unlike Neeson, he would never have a chance to revitalize his career with action flicks.)

Neeson’s relatively injury-free despite his multiple action movies. Maybe that`s because he continues to employ his longtime stunt double Mark Vanselow. The actor said Vanselow is considered part of the family.

“I don’t do my own stunts but the fighting aspect I love to do,” said Neeson, who can still throw a convincing punch.

Soon, the actor will leave the comfort of home (and the action genre), and head to Taiwan to star in the Martin Scorsese film Silence, which is set in the 17th century when Jesuits pushed into Japan.

Neeson’s character is based on the Jesuit Father Ferreira, who eventually abandoned his religion, to the embarrassment of the Catholic Church.

It’s a change of pace for Neeson. Gunplay isn’t likely.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/run-all-nights-liam-neeson-reborn-as-action-hero-with-video/feed0Film Review Run All Nightbbt1Film Review Run All NightLiam NeesonRun All Night’s Joel Kinnaman likes to mix it up (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/run-all-nights-joel-kinnaman-likes-to-mix-it-up-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/run-all-nights-joel-kinnaman-likes-to-mix-it-up-with-video#commentsThu, 12 Mar 2015 19:53:51 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=597119Between the sci-fi film RoboCop and the superhero movie Suicide Squad, Joel Kinnaman managed to fit in the gritty crime thriller Run All Night.

“Gotta keep it real,” said Kinnaman from New York. “You know how it is?”

In the movie, the Swedish-born actor portrays Mike Conlon, the estranged son of Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson), the latter character a boozy hit man haunted by his murderous past. When the hired killer ends up shooting the son of his mob boss, Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris) to protect Mike, they both have to hide out together and then confront their assassins.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s movie is a cinema noir showdown with lots of car chases and gunplay. Certainly, Kinnaman appreciated the plucky tone of the movie but acting opposite Neeson had its attractions, as well.

“It was such an honour to play with a heavyweight actor like Liam,” said the 35-year-old.

Their bond was immediate but their rehearsal time was minimal. “We discussed the script over a dinner and we just went at it.”

Preparing to play his character was more complicated, however. Kinnaman spent two weeks in New York working with a dialect coach to get his character’s working-class accent down. Since Mike, in the film, is a former pugilist, he also worked out at boxing clubs to perfect the moves. The process was a full immersion into the movie’s world of a rough and tumble New York.

Joel Kinnaman appears in a scene from Run All Night. [Warner Bros. Pictures]

“There is a special kind of humour you only get in New York,” Kinnaman said. “It’s a tough-love humour; New Yorkers can mean well but sound harsh.”

The actor was even permitted to revise some of his character’s traits that didn’t ring true for him.

“I changed a few things,” Kinnaman said. “In the original script, Mike was clean cut and became a victim of the circumstances and quite helpless, so I made him more of a take-charge guy.

“If he had grown up in a tough neighbourhood with an alcoholic gangster father, it would’ve had some repercussions on who he was and what he could deal with.”

Despite the required running and jumping in the movie, and the car chases and crashes, the actor survived with just a few cuts and bruises.

It was the multiple night shoots that had an impact on him. “Anybody who works nights for any job knows it’s tough on your mind and difficult to keep your concentration,” Kinnaman said. “You can lose control and sometimes get those sucky moments. You just trust the director that he doesn’t put those moments where you suck in the picture.”

Actor Joel Kinnaman [Getty Images]

So far, filmmakers seem to have served him well. After more than a decade as a journeyman actor, he had his breakout in 2011 playing Detective Holder in the acclaimed AMC series The Killing. He co-starred in Thor and has a part in the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road.

Initially, he hesitated when the RoboCop part was offered to him, but eventually he went for it.

“It’s always pretty clear what I want to do,” Kinnaman said of his career plan. “Some actors have a hit and want to replicate that. The (Swedish) culture I grew up in revered the actors who always tried something different.”

But re-imagining the live-action version of Disney’s classic animated musical Cinderella put the director’s creative talent to the test.

“The story had to respond to the 21st century and at the same time be loyal to the fairly tale,” Branagh said of the challenge. Indeed, the film’s plot loyally parallels the 1950 cartoon. Lily James plays Cinderella, who finds herself dealing with a sinister stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and taunting step sisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) after her father dies suddenly. An unexpected meeting with a handsome stranger leads to a royal ball and the opportunity for a better life.

There are fewer songs in the latest Cinderella compared to the classic animation but just as many fantastical events reproduced with state-of-the-art special effects.

The mice have a place in the new version, as does the evil cat.

And James as Cinderella even sings A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, one of the signature songs from the animated musical.

There’s the Bippiti-Boppiti-Boo moment, too, which was added in post-production at the request of Disney.

Mostly, though, Branagh said that he was left to his own devices during the script revisions and the shoot.

Lily James, left, Kenneth Branagh and Ben Chaplin on the set of Cinderella [Disney ]

Updating the movie’s message began before filming started at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, England when Branagh collaborated with screenwriter Chris Weitz.

Both director and writer made sure that irony and sarcasm went missing in the dialogue. “Snark and self-mocking is an easy place to go,” said the screenwriter, “but we wanted to avoid it.”

They also emphasized that Cinderella wasn’t passively waiting to be saved from a miserable life.

“It’s not an easy sell, but being kind and brave is Cinderella’s superpower,” said Weitz, who also co-wrote the new Star Wars movie.

Obviously, casting the right actress in the lead was key for Branagh.

After a lengthy audition process James, who plays Lady Rose on Downton Abbey, was selected for a few reasons.

“Lily has a strength and a sweetness which is a rare combination,” said the director.

James was also able to translate Branagh’s vision of Cinderella, which was defined early on for the actress.

“Ken was clear right from the start that he didn’t want (Cinderella) waiting around for a prince to save her,” said James.

“He wanted her to be in charge of the choices she made, and show an inner strength and courage that allowed her to withstand what she puts up with.”

Lily James as Cinderella, left, and Richard Madden as the Prince in Cinderella [Disney ]

Branagh worked closely with Madden, as well, to give the Prince more depth.

“Ken told me I had to create a guy that is worthy of Cinderella’s affections,” Madden said. “I wanted to make him aware of his own privilege, too. And I got rid of my swagger and I learned to walk properly as a respected prince might.”

The stepmother was another pivotal character, but Branagh said Blanchett was already attached to play the role before he signed on to direct.

“Cate was one of the reasons I wanted to do this,” he said of the Oscar-honoured actress.

He wasn’t disappointed with what transpired on set or off.

“Cate’s a fantastic collaborator and was also a kind of leader of the company,” noted Branagh.

“She’s a proper leading actress in the sense that, without show or effort, she is inclusive and careful of the other actors. And both Cate and Helena Bonham Carter were extremely generous with Lily.”

Unfortunately, the ballroom sequence turned out to be more difficult than Branagh had anticipated.

Filmed over a two week stretch, the scene required the wrangling of 500 extras in period costumes while focusing on the details surrounding the dance moves of James’ Cinderella and Madden’s Prince.

The pivotal ballroom dance had its separate challenges as Madden confirmed.

One of the issues was Cinderella’s ball gown, which Madden kept stepping on, ruining take after take in the process.

“I kept thinking, ‘There are three people in this relationship,’” Madden said.

The 25-year-old won the role of the rebellious Lady Rose in the popular TV series Downton Abbey almost fresh out of acting school. Now, she plays Cinderella in the Disney live-action film version of the fairy tale, directed by Kenneth Branagh.

“I’m sure its going to come, but I hope not yet,” said James of career disappointments.

In the meantime, James is front and centre in the movie playing the iconic Cinderella, who finds herself coping with the mean stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and taunting stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) after the death of her father.

Only a chance encounter with a handsome stranger in the woods leads Cinderella to a royal ball and the opportunity for a better life.

Richard Madden plays Prince Charming, Helena Bonham Carter is the Fairy Godmother, Derek Jacobi portrays the King and Stellan Skarsgård is the manipulative Duke. Based on the classic 1950 animated movie musical, the film is modestly updated for a modern young audience but still includes the fantasy flair of the cartoon through state-of-the-art special effects.

Branagh said he relied on maintaining the delicate balance of being loyal to the story while refining the message through James’s portrayal.

Lily James stars in Cinderella [Getty Images]

“We felt Cinderella was invited by the changed world to present a strong, empowered woman who is spirited and powerful, and Lily brought that to her performance,” the director said.

“What I really like is that Cinderella is being defined by (Branagh) through her strengths of kindness and courage, and that’s her superpower,” James said.

When in doubt, she relied on the director to temper her performance in the appropriate way, which allowed her to experiment with variations.

“I trusted (Branagh) completely and he believed in me, which is the most freeing experience because I could do anything, and he would guide me through it,” James said. “He’s such a remarkable director, and I think it’s because he’s a remarkable actor.”

She needed those wits to survive the gruelling ballroom sequences, which required James as Cinderella to waltz in a floor-length gown. Patience and perseverance were necessary for hours at a time.

Before the shoot, James and Madden (her dancing partner as Prince Charming) rehearsed the choreography at London dance studios every weekend for months. James said she felt quite accomplished until she arrived on set.

“Suddenly, we were like, ‘Oh, yeah, the dress,’” said James, who had rehearsed without it. “I was having a complete nervous breakdown.”

As beautiful as it was, the costume’s in a cage-like contraption with 12 layers of gossamer-thin silk “that basically ripped when you looked at it.” So Madden had to navigate around the edges of the delicate apparel without tripping or ripping the gown. And the corset required for the gown meant the actress couldn’t breathe that easily through it all.

“So there were accidents and (dress) casualties, and the dance is quite long and quite athletic, but somehow, through Disney magic, it came together,” she said.

Another challenge arrived with the singing of A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, one of the signature songs from the animated musical.

“I love singing so much, and as a kid that was kind of what I wanted to do, but I was out of practice,” James said. Some vocal training boosted her confidence and by the time the recording sessions came around, she was prepared for the task — although the sessions were a bit unorthodox.

Branagh “was filming somewhere and he had to be on Skype, so he was there (by Skype) when I recorded the song, giving me notes as I did,” she said. Daunting, too, was the thought of acting opposite her idols Blanchett and Bonham Carter, whom she revered while a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

When James successfully auditioned for Cinderella, she couldn’t help but be anxious. Needlessly, as it turned out.

‘It was an unbelievable and very surreal experience, and I’m so grateful,’ said James

“It was an unbelievable and very surreal experience, and I’m so grateful,” said James of her scenes with Blanchett and Bonham Carter.

Blanchett “is one of the great actresses of all time, and she is so easy to work with because she is so layered and multi-dimensional.”

And Bonham Carter “is one of the coolest, kindest women I’ve ever met and she has the best sense of humour. When she first came on set during a night shoot, she was like this bright light over the horizon.”

Next month, James starts filming the sixth season of Downton Abbey, but she’s coy about what the future holds for her Lady Rose character.

She’s also unsure how much longer the series will run. Rumour has it tht the sixth season will be its last.

“I actually don’t know what’s happening, but I hope it won’t be the last (season),” said James. “I want it to keep going forever.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/lily-james-helps-update-cinderella-fairy-tale-with-video/feed1Lily Jamesbbt1Lily James Film Review CinderellaScene and Heard: Lily James celebrates Cinderella and Cate Blanchetthttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-lily-james-celebrates-cinderella-and-cate-blanchett
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-lily-james-celebrates-cinderella-and-cate-blanchett#respondTue, 10 Mar 2015 19:25:39 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=596895Downton Abbey’s Lily James portrays Cinderella in the Disney live action version of the classic 1950 animated musical.

And it really was a fairy-tale dream come true for the English actress.

“I really loved princesses growing up,” she said during a Los Angeles interview. “I was definitely one of those girls but then I had two brothers so they kept me from being too much of a princess by knocking me off my pedestal a bit.”

Eventually, she grew out of it but somehow she was handed the Cinderella part, anyway.

“I guess I still didn’t want to be a princess when I got older because I originally auditioned for one of the (step)sisters,” recalled James. “Once I started reading (for Cinderella) I was totally desperate to play her.”

Eventually, talent won out but then she realized, as Cinderella, she would have more than a few intense scenes with one of her acting idols, Cate Blanchett. who plays the nasty stepmother in the film.

To prepare, she re-watched Blanchett in her Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine performance.

“Which was a bad idea,” James admitted. “So I was just in awe of her, but I didn’t know what to expect.

“I actually have seen her in interviews and she says that her method changes from job to job.”

After a few anxious minutes that first day on set, James settled down.

“Cate was so encouraging and supportive of me, but like not overly so, more like it’s no big deal, which is a huge for me,” James said.

“What was great, too, is that she’s so cruel (as the stepmother) but sometimes it’s hidden so it’s more disconcerting and I could easily respond to what she’s doing.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-lily-james-celebrates-cinderella-and-cate-blanchett/feed0Lily 2bbt1Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel welcomes back Lillete Dubey (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-welcomes-back-lillete-dubey-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-welcomes-back-lillete-dubey-with-video#respondThu, 05 Mar 2015 22:43:22 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=595849LONDON — Lillete Dubey has appeared in more than 40 films, many of them popular Hindi productions, so she’s a familiar face in Asia.

She’s also well-known in Britain for her stage, film and TV work, including the popular series Mumbai Calling, the chat show By Invitation Only and the movie Monsoon Wedding.

Now Dubey has a second opportunity to re-introduce herself to mainstream movie goers in North America by reprising her role as Mrs. Kapoor in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Besides Dubey, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Dev Patel and the ensemble are back for part two of the tale profiling the lives of outsourced seniors staying at a hotel in India.

In fact, hotel owner Sonny (Patel) has plans to open a second hotel in the latest instalment of the comedy-drama even as he tries to help organize his upcoming wedding with his fiancée (Tina Desai) and his mother (Dubey).

New are two separate hotel guests (played by Richard Gere and Tamsin Greig) who may not be who they say they are. Indeed, Gere’s mysterious man falls for Mrs. Kapoor, which complicates things.

“Let’s say I was hoping that something might grow out of the first film,” Dubey said. “I was wondering what sort of line it would take and how the second movie would sustain interest.”

Lillete Dubey, left, and Richard Gere in a scene from The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. [Fox Searchlight Films]

Based on the reaction from most preview audiences, the movie does. And it’s not a surprise that the 60-year-old was thrilled with the chance to expand her part.

“When I discovered there was going to be a romance with my character, I said, ‘Finally’ because she looks like a tough old biddy in the first one,” she said.

Returning to join director John Madden’s cast was motivation enough for Dubey but when she found out Gere was her guy she was even more pleased.

“He’s quite the middle-aged lady’s fantasy,” Dubey said.

Their first meeting was hardly cute, however. The ensemble of actors was filming into the early hours one morning when Gere showed up on set to say hello to his co-star.

“My introduction to Richard was a bit strange,” recalled Dubey. “Something I ate had disagreed with me, and I had thrown up suddenly at 2:30 (a.m.).”

Fifteen minutes later Madden tapped Dubey on the shoulder with Gere by his side.

“It was Richard Gere at 2:45 in the morning, and he came to give me a kiss and I stopped him.” she said. “He told me, ‘Honey, I’ve had a lot of reactions in my life but that’s the first.’ ”

All was explained and forgiven, and Dubey and Gere became close on set and off.

“I found him down to earth and charming and affectionate and generous as an actor,” she said. “We would keep on trying until we both liked what we did. We had a really good connection.”

On their days off, they even went shopping together in the markets of Jaipur, India, which was the cast’s base of operations.

“The first time people came running for autographs, and I said, “Don’t bother him,’ ” Dubey said. “They said, ‘Who’s he? We want your autograph,’ and Richard laughed his head off.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-welcomes-back-lillete-dubey-with-video/feed0Film Review The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotelbbt1Film Review The Second Best Exotic Marigold HotelJudi Dench says India is star of Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/judi-dench-says-india-is-star-of-second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/judi-dench-says-india-is-star-of-second-best-exotic-marigold-hotel-with-video#respondThu, 05 Mar 2015 16:12:40 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=595678Judi Dench greeted an underling with a smile and a hug in front of London’s lavish Claridge’s Hotel.

As they headed arm in arm toward the hotel’s ornate entrance, Dench shared a private thought with him which made him chuckle.

Asked later what she had said, the 81-year-old actress merely shrugged. “Probably some silliness,” she said.

The playful Dench was available to discuss The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a sequel to 2012’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which earned nearly $137 million worldwide on a $10-million budget.

Director John Madden agreed to do another film only if he could get all his original players. They didn’t hesitate, including Dench, who smiled like a schoolgirl recalling the invitation.

“I do what’s offered, more or less, but if you get paid to go to India again, you do it,” she said. “What was wonderful, and a huge compliment, I think, is that 70 per cent of the India crew were back.”

Creature comforts were few in Jaipur, India, which the cast and crew used as a base of operations. It was the same for the nearby village of Khempur, where a former royal palace became the Marigold Hotel.

English actress Dame Judi Dench [Getty Images]

“I think India is one of the great stars of both films,” Dench said. “You might try to fake it, but we had the sights, sounds and colours. And we really did have to use everything going on because there were crowds and crowds watching us film.”

Reuniting with friends was another plus. Dench, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Dev Patel and the rest of the cast return for the second part of the story profiling senior citizen relationships at a hotel in India.

In the second movie, Sonny (Patel) has plans to open a second hotel while two new hotel guests (Richard Gere and Tamsin Greig) may be hiding some secrets.

Then there are Nighy’s Douglas and Dench’s Evelyn. They continue to fall for each other, although Evelyn’s hesitant. “Evelyn doesn’t know where she’s going with her life,” Dench said. “It’s a shared worry, the commitment thing.”

Nighy and Dench also shared a worry, another motorbike scene in which Nighy’s Douglas has Evelyn as a passenger riding along a busy street.

Madden needed 12 takes to get what he needed. “And around the sixth take, I am on the back, and John (Madden) says, ‘Now, wave,’” Dench said.

As usual, she was game for anything and remarkably compelling. And Nighy continued to savour performing opposite her.

“(Dench) is very easy and a real democrat in every sense of the word, and classy to do business with,” Nighy said.

He would know. He directed Dench to her first of seven Oscar nominations in Mrs. Brown (playing Queen Victoria) and her only Academy Award, as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.

The latest Marigold role “is slightly unusual for (Dench),” Madden said. “She is closer to herself than she would like, but an audience instantly engages with her, whatever she is doing.”

When Dench is informed of Madden’s appraisal, she’s quick to respond. “He directs through stealth,” she said. “He just makes it a glorious kind of collaboration. He’s fantastically talented and even-tempered.”

She agreed with his assessment that Evelyn is almost too close to her own personality.

“That was the one thing that worried me and was disconcerting,” Dench said. “Before I would go to set, I would be made up and I would look into the mirror, and I thought, ‘I don’t know who this person is,’ because it was me. So I did find it difficult, indeed.”

Despite the difficulty, it seems Dench would be up for a third Marigold Hotel if fans want it. “That would be heaven,” she said.

What about a new cast member for Marigold 3?

“Johnny Depp,” Dench offered without hesitating. “Why? How can you ask such a question?”

Jackman sports a mullet in the sci-fi action flick Chappie just as he did two decades ago in his first Australian TV role on the series Correlli.

“My wife (Deborra-Lee Furness) reminded me that I had a mullet when she met me,” he says of the show starring Furness. “So it’s a nice throwback.”

In the Neill Blomkamp-directed cautionary tale, Chappie is a Johannesburg police droid transformed by a rogue scientist (Dev Patel) into a robot that can think and feel.

The trouble arrives when street hoods kidnap him and turn him into a bank-robber.

Jackman is a competing scientist who wants to eliminate Chappie permanently.

He’s an Aussie scoundrel with a bad haircut, a penchant for wearing shorts and a need to be liked.

“I love the idea of people sort of being themselves in films.” says Blomkamp. “That’s where the idea of Hugh’s character being Australian came from, as well as letting him choose clothes and hair.”

Hugh Jackman, left, in a scene from Chappie. [Columbia Pictures ]

Says Jackman: “I haven’t worn those khaki shorts since high school. And I’m very proud of the mullet. Watch, on Halloween this year, mullets will be back.”

The Australian slang used by his character was more difficult to reference. In fact, the Sydney native had to do some research.

“I had to Google Australian slang,” Jackman admits. “And a lot of the ones that come up in the film, like ‘a frog in a sock’ and ‘smart as a dunny rat,’ I had never heard before.”

Still, he embraces his bad guy with a sly wink. “He’s one of those guys who thinks he’s the coolest, and that everyone at the office likes him, and that he’s got it all together, which he doesn’t.”

He says he appreciates the serious themes in the film, which investigates the pros and cons of creating artificial intelligence.

“One of the many great things about working with Neill is that he’s deeply involved in the philosophical heart of this movie,” Jackman said. “Not only is the movie about robots becoming sentient, it is also about the very nature of consciousness.”

Meanwhile, he continues to be a supporter of scientific advancements despite’s Chappie’s potential for dangerous dysfunction.

“Generally, I’m an optimist,” says Jackman. “I know at every major turning point in history, (the creation of the train, for example) some people thought that it was the end of civilization. I am a firm believer that the pull for human beings is for good generally outweighing the bad.”

Hugh Jackman stars in Chappie [Getty Images]

Mind you, he has a lot to be positive about personally and professionally. After seven Wolverine movie performances he has at least two more in his future with X-Men: Apocalypse set for release next year and another out by 2017. He might also take comfort in his best actor Oscar nomination for his Jean Valjean part in Les Misérables.

This summer Jackman portrays Blackbeard in the Joe Wright re-working of the Peter Pan fable called Pan with Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily. Garret Hedlund is a young Hook and Levi Miller is Pan.

Later in the year, he’ll start shooting the musical version of The Greatest Show on Earth, playing the infamous showman P. T. Barnum.

Sadly, the actor can only speculate on the potential for Wolverine entering other comic book universes.

“But it is a fun Friday night discussion of, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to see Batman fight Wolverine?’”

And the verdict? “Wolverine would just shred him. ”

On the home front, Jackman is even happier. He and Furness have an enduring marriage. And he’s an involved parent to their two kids, Oscar, 15, and Ava, 10, who enjoy gently mocking their father.

“I have a nickname at home — El Vague-o,” says Jackman. “Apparently, I’m very vague. I forget stuff all the time. I would love a non-judgmental reminder. But I get no sense of respect from my kids.

“They say, ‘Remember you came back upstairs to get that phone. Why are you walking back down without it?’”

Blomkamp began his career as a teen animator in South Africa, working for Copley at his TV production company. To return the favour, Blomkamp hired his first employer as a featured performer in the 2009 film District 9, 2013’s Elysium and now Chappie.

The latest sci-fi film collaboration has Copley playing the titular robot character in performance capture. Chappie’s a former Johannesburg police droid that soon becomes capable of thinking and feeling. When street hoods kidnap the impressionable robot, they transform it into a criminal.

“It was a fun experience, really, to get to play a kid most of the time,” said Copley of his naive, easy-to-cajole cyborg.

Wearing the skin-tight grey suit with tracking markers for the Chappie animators was not one of Copley’s favourite things, but the actor enjoyed the emoting experience. “I was able to engage with everybody on the set, which was important to me,” he said.

Meanwhile, his visual arts background allowed him to appreciate the animators’ state-of-the-art skills when he screened their daily work.

“I think these guys are the unsung heroes of our business,” said 41-year-old Copley of Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop team, which previously handled the special effects for District 9 and Elysium. “Over 200 people were involved in putting Chappie on top of me.

“It was an almost-magical experience. They gave birth to this totally new and creative being, so in a small way it was like they were creating (artificial intelligence). As an actor, I sort of felt like I made some new being.”

Director Neill Blomkamp [Getty Images]

As usual, the 35-year-old Blomkamp, who moved to Vancouver when he was 18, infiltrated the action in the movie with some philosophical themes.

“If someone is creating (artificial intelligence), they’re basically walking into God’s territory,” noted the director. “Basically, you’re doing something that should only be left to God, therefore, you shouldn’t do it.”

Also key for Chappie was shooting the film in Johannesburg. Initially, Blomkamp had decided to do the production in the U.S. but quickly changed his mind.

“There was an interesting thing I noticed, culturally, with the script,” said Blomkamp. “When I gave it to the financiers, they viewed the idea of autonomous law enforcement robots as totally satirical. Take that police droid idea to (South Africa) and you’d likely get 96 per cent of the population agree that it’s a good idea.

“So we look at the atrocities humans do to each other (in the movie) and then we look at how this blank-slate robot becomes capable of becoming more human than the humans around him.”

Filming in South Africa also allowed Blomkamp to hire “Jo’burg” rappers Ninja and Yo-Landi to play the hoodlums who try to lead Chappie into a life of crime.

“The band is so essential to the film that putting them in North America would only make them a distracting fish-out-of-water thing,” said Blomkamp. “Keeping the movie in South Africa meant they stayed in their native environment and it felt legit.”

Weaver, who plays the CEO of the defence company producing police droids, said that she was impressed by how Blomkamp’s movie exists on different levels.

“I think every science-fiction film I’ve done is pretty distinctive in terms of the world,” she said. “What I love about Neill’s films is that although sometimes people think of sci-fi as ‘film light’, Neill’s films always have such an underpinning that’s actually very important.”

Jackman, the scientist determined to destroy Chappie, praised Blomkamp, as well: “One of the many great things about working with Neill is that he’s so deeply involved in everything.”

The director was pleased with the experience, too, whatever the critical and box-office results will be.

“We had a riotous good time making the movie,” Blomkamp said. “And it was exciting to work again in South Africa.”

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang. But these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

MOVIES

Big releases on March 6: Chappie, Unfinished Business.

Big picture: Johnny 5 is alive! Only his hobbies include occasional police brutality. It’s Short Circuit meets WALL-E meets RoboCop — meets the future I’ve always feared/hoped for. The film is from Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium), the South African director who likes to create sci-fi that makes you think. Chappie is a police droid re-programmed by criminals to think for himself. Suddenly he’s the black sheep among our future robotic overlords. Meanwhile, Unfinished Business does for business trips what The Hangover did for bachelor parties — and what Vince Vaughn did for wedding crashing, dodge ball, and internships etc. Vaughn plays a small business owner with two dysfunctional employees (Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco) who heads to Europe to secure a vital business deal. The comedic trio faces everything from kinky moments at a global sex fetish event to being tear-gassed at an economic summit.

Forecast: Chappie will have a romantic interest played by a Roomba. Unfinished Business will feel like National Lampoon’s European Vacation — minus the family or vacation. (And, finally, Vaughn will be far more memorable on TV in the upcoming Season 2 of True Detective.)

Honorable mention: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Indian and English culture clashes again with warm and fuzzy results. Only this time Richard Gere joins much of the original ensemble cast, including Judi Dench and Bill Nighy. And there’s also a heart-warming wedding. (Yawn. Somebody call me when they make either the Second Grand Budapest Hotel or The Second Best Bates Motel. I’d watch either of those movies).

Big picture: American crime? Not enough of that on TV, am I right? The words “from the screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave” tell you this isn’t going to be CSI fluff. When a young, white couple are brutally attacked in a small, California town, suspicion falls on young men in the Hispanic community. Violence, prejudice and injustice threaten to engulf everyone. (This isn’t a “feel good” show to lift you out of seasonal depression, but it is a sign the broadcast networks are feeling the pressure to match cable for drama quality). Meanwhile, one of those networks, NBC, is going to regret letting this next one get away to Netflix. It’s the story of a young, naive woman rescued from a cult who opts to rebuild her life in New York City. (No, it’s not a biopic on Katie Holmes). It’s a comedy produced by Tina Fey! Ellie Kemper stats as the titular Kimmy; Fey’s 30 Rock co-star Jane Krakowski also appears as a regular.

Forecast: Audiences will wish American Crime had the grit of True Detective. Given our copycat culture, expect crime dramas in the near future called American Detective, True Crime, Crime Detective and True American. Meanwhile, comedy lovers should celebrate Kemper, Fey and Krakowksi together on a new project. All for one and one for all.

Honorable mention: CSI Cyber (March 4, CBS/CTV). Patricia Arquette goes from Oscar glory to procedural doldrums. As head of the FBI’s Cyber Crime Division, she also has to babysit Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek). I would have preferred a series about Chappie to a fourth entry in the CSI franchise.

Big picture: You can’t make this kind of stuff up. The rootsy husband and wife duo, Pharis and Jason Romero, are from a small town called Horsefly, B.C. — and recorded this album in the workshop of their own banjo company. As for their music and lifestyle choices? SIGN. ME. UP. (I’ve already thrown my smartphone in a snow bank and bought a pony). The duo brings new life and passion to a classic folks and Americana. Meanwhile, Of Montreal is my favourite band not from Montreal that should be. On their lucky No. 13 album, the ever-creative indie band mixes disco and funk, garage and hard rock. This is the kind of idiosyncratic group with song titles like Chthonian Dirge for Uruk the Other. Enough said.

Forecast: The Romeros welcome you into a timeless world and make you want to stay; Of Montreal will inspire many hipsters to think they’re smarter than they are — and some future indie group to call themselves Of My Parent’s Basement.

Honorable mentions: Kelly Clarkson (Piece by Piece), Give Clarkson credit; she ran out of her “seven minutes of American Idol fame” years ago. She’s the real deal — even if she’s not your thing.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/pop-forecast-for-march-2-chappie-american-crime-new-this-week/feed0Chappiepostmedianews1American Crime TV showJason and Pharis Romero: a rootsy husband and wife duo.The Lazarus Effect’s Mark Duplass goes ‘slow and steady’ (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/the-lazarus-effects-mark-duplass-goes-slow-and-steady-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/the-lazarus-effects-mark-duplass-goes-slow-and-steady-with-video#respondFri, 27 Feb 2015 14:56:41 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=594068Mark Duplass refused to rush things as an actor, writer and director, working only on projects he was passionate about. Now, his career resilience is paying off with two high-profile gigs.

Duplass, with his brother Jay, are collaborating on the HBO series Togetherness. He’s also one of the featured performers in his first scary thriller, The Lazarus Effect.

“It’s been a slow and steady rise,” said Duplass, who was promoting The Lazarus Effect at a Los Angeles hotel.

In the movie, a team of medical scientists find a way to bring dead patients back to life with a serum code named Lazarus. When one of the medical team members (Olivia Wilde) dies after a lab accident, her husband (Duplass) resurrects her but with dire consequences.

The movie contains lots of savagery, panic and some grim sequences of death and destruction. There are plenty of plot twists, as well as a prevailing sense of foreboding.

“Not only are there jumps and scares, but there is a looming doom being cast in a small space with a villain who is hard to define or anticipate,” said Duplass.

Mark Duplass [The Associated Press]

The 38-year-old also liked the accessibility of the movie compared to most of his projects, which lean toward film-festival showcases and limited releases.

“If I am being honest, I guess what I really liked is that (The Lazarus Effect) can go out on 3,000 screens and scare the s— out of everybody,” he said. “The movies I make are more nuanced with an appropriate release pattern, and I always wanted to be part of a movie that could go wide.”

However, director David Gelb asked the cast to keep their performances mostly modulated and under played, aspects of performance Duplass appreciates. Indeed, Wilde and Duplass were committed to making their relationship seem real. Yet both decided to invest in the genre experience, as well.

“It was one of those things where you say, ‘Am I all in or am I not doing this?’” Duplass said. “We just went for it, and hoped it wasn’t too much.”

The Lazarus Effect features a cast not usually associated with terror trips.

“When you see a horror-film actor or a scream-queen person do it more than once, you get a little de-sensitized to the experience,” said Duplass. “I’m not trying to disrespect myself, but I also think that subconsciously, when you see a hot male lead in my role, the audience says, ‘Oh, I know I am watching a horror movie because there is no way that guy’s a scientist.”

Certainly, the Duplass brothers became known for presenting the antithesis of exaggeration and excess in their films. With brother Jay, Duplass shaped the “mumblecore” classics — The Puffy Chair and Baghead — from 2005 to 2008. Those improvised movies were followed by more mainstream but still modest cinematic productions, including Cyrus, Jeff Who Lives at Home and My Sister’s Sister.

On the acting front, Duplass appeared in all of his films and TV shows, and over the last four years he’s also been hired for other people’s productions. That includes such high-profile movies as Zero Dark Thirty and Tammy, as well as sitcoms The League and The Mindy Project.

“I am getting more opportunities, but now I am saying ‘no’ more than ever,” he said. “That’s heartbreaking, because I am busy either producing (four new Netflix shows) or making Togetherness.”

Still, his higher actor profile is making him more recognizable as that man “with the cheap sweater, bad hair and not really in shape.” Sometimes, fans of The League stop Duplass to say hi. Occasionally, fans of the Duplass films nod their approval.

“The League fans are pretty loyal and want to come talk,” he said of the raunchy FX comedy show. “The independent film fans are a little more sensitive and they don’t want to bother you.”

Either way, he’s resigned himself to having that Mr. Average look.

“I often get someone who sees me, and says hello because they think we are friends,” said Duplass. “When they find out we’re not, they get very nervous and anxious to get out of the conversation.

“I try to let them off the hook by saying, ‘It’s OK. I am a moderate level TV star, and that’s why I look familiar, so don’t sweat it.”

First, an inquiring mind wanted to know how to pronounce his last name, an issue of accuracy since Nighy broke into the film business with his scene-stealing rocker role in 2003’s Love Actually.

“It rhymes with sigh,” the 65-year-old said, “but I don’t give two flying monkeys about it.”

The sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was something completely different. Nighy enthusiastically reunited with Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Dev Patel and the rest of the ensemble for a continuation of the story about senior citizens living in India.

In the second movie, Sonny (Patel) plans to open a second hotel even as he tries to help organize his upcoming wedding. New are two hotel guests (played by Richard Gere and Tamsin Greig) who may not be who they say they are.

Bill Nighy stars in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel [Getty Images]

“Every time I would say Marigold 2, I had to do a reality check,” Nighy said. “It’s not something I would even associate with a franchise.”

There was no denying the first film in 2012 hit a global chord across multiple demographics, earning an impressive $136.8 million US worldwide on a modest $10 million budget.

“I could speculate to be sociable but I can’t pretend to have an answer,” Nighy said. “But I know the script (by Ol Parker) is good, the cast is great and the director (John Madden) is an extremely gifted man.

“I think we unlocked something universal for everybody, an alternative version of what it means to be getting old.”

Nighy says the second time around with Dench is even better. He shared the screen with her in Notes on a Scandal but the first Marigold movie required more intimate interaction.

“The first time with Judi Dench I was intimidated,” Nighy confessed. “I would wake up and say to myself, ‘I’m working with Judi Dench.’”

The second time Nighy was more at ease, mostly thanks to her graciousness. “She is such a remarkable person and a wonderful artist.”

Yet their mutual respect didn’t help that much during their motorbike scene when Douglas has Evelyn as his passenger riding on a crowded street.

“I hated it,” confirmed Nighy. “This is the second time I’ve been on a motorcycle. I’ve never been one of those guys, and now I’ve got Judi Dench on my back.

“You could kill the Queen and still sneak back into the country, but not Judi Dench. If I did, I would have had to wander the world stateless because I would never (be allowed) home, that’s for sure.”

There were no incidents — “and Judi was very good at appearing to be OK” — but the seemingly brief moment had to be repeated 17 times.

Nighy will never witness the results. He refuses to view his movies and TV shows.

He’s never seen himself as the pirate captain Davy Jones in the two Pirates of the Caribbean movies Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End or Minister Rufus Scrimgeour in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 or Startibartfast in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“I don’t want to see,” Nighy said. “I tried that once and it doesn’t work for me. It takes me too long to recover. I have the usual difficulty proving to myself I can do the job. I don’t really need hard evidence that I can’t.”

Most fans and critics can’t catch any of his alleged flaws on film, TV or on stage, most recently in the well-received West End revival of David Hare’s Skylight, which Nighy brings to Broadway this summer.

The humble actor will agree, however, that he’s in a good place professionally as he enters his later years.

“I don’t know that I have had an attitude toward the later stages of my life,” said Nighy. “For some years now I am having a much better time than when I was young. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been upright and healthy.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/bill-nighy-says-marigold-hotel-struck-universal-chord-with-video/feed0Film Review The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotelbbt1The Second Best Exotic Marigold HotelFilm Review The Second Best Exotic Marigold HotelBruce Greenwood’s major turn in modest film Elephant Song (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/bruce-greenwoods-major-turn-in-modest-film-elephant-song-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/bruce-greenwoods-major-turn-in-modest-film-elephant-song-with-video#respondWed, 25 Feb 2015 21:23:54 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=593494Vancouver’s Bruce Greenwood can handle any acting opportunity: He co-stars in major motion pictures, and he takes demanding roles in independent films.

For instance, the 58-year-old appears opposite Russell Crowe in Fathers and Daughters, which will arrive in theatres later in the year. He’s also part of the ensemble in Truth, which includes Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford. The independent film Elephant Song, showcased at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, is the modest movie in his 2015 thespian agenda. But his portrayal in the drama might be one of his most formidable roles.

Directed by Charles Binamé, the Canadian film features Greenwood as a psychiatrist trying to unravel the mystery of a missing colleague by analyzing a manipulative patient (Xavier Dolan) who might have something to do with the situation. Co-starring Colm Feore, Catherine Keener, Carrie-Anne Moss and Guy Nadon, the story is driven by the cat-and-mouse interplay between the seasoned Greenwood and the nuanced Dolan.

Greenwood, who began his career in 1977 on an episode of The Beachcombers, reflected on his work ethic and his latest film challenge during a conversation from his L.A. home.

Q Did you anticipate the Elephant Song acting challenge?

A When I read the script, it felt like it was something I hadn’t done before, but it wasn’t so far out of my comfort zone that it was dangerous.

Xavier Dolan, left, and Bruce Greenwood in Elephant Song. [Seville]

Q Did you connect instantly with Dolan?

A We talked for hours and hours about how much we should give away, and how much we should keep close to the chest.

Q Was it a complicated emoting exercise?

A It was like three-dimensional chess. There were so many ramifications to every move.

Q Did you enjoy the slow build of the narrative?

A The fun was that it’s very tricky to line it all up. We just took everything beat by beat.

Q Was director Binamé helpful?

A He’s a sensitive guy and very inclusive with the thought process.

Q So it was a collaborative environment?

A Yes. We really felt like a team, and often times you don’t because the director is very busy juggling a lot of balls in the air. But he seemed to be interested in the moment to moment stuff.

Bruce Greenwood stars in Elephant Song [Getty Images]

Q Did you improvise?

A I love rehearsal. But we did one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

Q What was that?

A In the movie, our characters meet for the first time, so (Dolan) said to the director, “How about I don’t meet with Bruce (they had never met) until we do that scene?”

Q Did you agree to do it?

A Not at first. I said, “Really?” So I thought, “OK, don’t get in your own way.” So we did meet for the first time with the cameras rolling, and it was amazing.

Q Are you an improv believer now?

A It probably wouldn’t work in a fight scene.

Q What else have you been up to besides Elephant Song?

A I did a movie with Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford called Truth and a movie (Fathers and Daughters) with Russell Crowe.

Q Crowe has a reputation for being demanding. Did you get along with him?

A Yes, he was great. I play his nemesis. I am the guy who gets in his way.

Q Are you the good guy or the bad guy?

A (Laughs) If there is a big star in the movie, chances are I am going to play the villain.